Any good pre Edwarian era adventure novels?

[FedoraFan112390]

Are there any good adventure novels, along the lines of Indiana Jones, that were released in, or were set in, the Edwardian Era (1900-1914)?

Also, were there any good fun romps similar to The Hardy Boys in this period? I've kind of fallen in love with the era...

 

[Capesofwrath]

Tarzan 1912. The lost World 1912. Just two off the top of my head and there were plenty of others.

 

[GHT]

HG Wells was prolific in that period, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and
The Island of Doctor Moreau. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Less famous, Jack London, The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf. John Buchan's, Prester John. Don't forget, Baroness Emma Orczy’s historical (18th c.) adventure The Scarlet Pimpernel. Rudyard Kipling's, With the Night Mail.
There must be hundreds, if not thousands, because it was an era pre-television, so reading was the end of day entertainment for most, and there were plenty of authors and good books to supply the need. Happy reading.

 

[DNO]

G. A. Henty's books and the Boys Own Annual are both precursors of the Hardy Boys. Henty is more late Victorian, however.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Every boy who grew up in the 1910s knew about Tom Swift And His Futuristic Gadget Of The Moment.

 

[FedoraFan112390]

Am curious too about adventure novels of or set in that time with a romantic streak. Like Richard Burton-esque.
I've just become fascinated with the era through odd inspiration: the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which is in a flashback set in 1912. I know that the characters in those scenes - their attire, their looks - as well as the music and everything was pulled from somewhere in our cultural memory of that period:

I feel like each of these character's appearance fits some sort of stereotyped or stock look of those Edwardian times, like some in-born cultural instinct, though I know not from where.

 

[Stanley Doble]

E. Phillips Oppenheim was a prolific and popular adventure novelist of the period although his stories tended to a more sophisticated cast of millionaires and spies. Still, I think you would enjoy them and they can be easily found for free online.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Zane Grey and Gene Stratton Porter might be up your alley. They wrote westerns in the period and were very popular.

Rudyard Kipling is hard to beat. I presume you have gone through Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories but he wrote other things as well.

 

[tropicalbob]

"The Man Who was Thursday" (1906) by G.K. Chesterton. It's a sort of detective-spy novel about a policeman trying to investigate an anarchist/terrorist cell in London, but that description hardly covers it. Surprises around every corner and nothing is what it seems. Absolutely brilliant and truly an unknown masterpiece. I just reread it recently, and it's caused me to finally buy the complete works. Why Terry Gilliam hasn't taken a shot at it is beyond me, as it's right up his alley.

 

[tropicalbob]

This is a great question. If you're adventurous in your reading, you might want to consider Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day." Most, if not all, of Pynchon's novels are intense studies of particular eras, and this one focuses on the Edwardian era and the beginnings of corporate hegemony, as well as the literary genres of the time. For instance, the book opens with a plot line (that appears throughout the novel) about the "Chums of Chance," a Tom Swiftian team of young aeronauts at the Chicago World's Fair. It's one of my favorites of Pynchon's novels.

 

[PeterB]

Edwardian era adventure novels -- this is the period that brought us the first couple of Buchans, Riddle of the Sands, H Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle and many others. It was a kind of golden age of adventure stories. I recommend starting with King Solomon's mines -- admittedly a little before the Edwardian period; read Riddle of the Sands, it is a great work, set just round the start of WW1. J Philips Oppenheim is certainly worth a dip.

 

[MikeKardec]

H Rider Haggard is the classic. For a modern day equivalent try Wilbur Smith's Courtney or Ballentyne Novels. Both track different aspects of the history of southern Africa from the 1870s to the 1980s, so a third or so of the collection falls in your area of interest. He'll have other, non-series books that answer your question too as well as a few great modern master pieces like Eye of the Tiger ... imagine a vastly improved version of To Have and Have Not (the movie) set of the east coast of Africa. Some of his work is occasionally odd, the sort of weirdness you only got in the "Historical Novel written in the 1970s" pseudo genre. If you hit one of these or a section of a book that has some of this in it (you'll know it when you get there) have faith, he only does it once in awhile. With the exception of Eye of the Tiger his early work might be a touch better than some of the more recent stuff. The books, especially the early ones are hard to find so an on-line search is probably necessary. Back in the days before e-books I got mine out of Australia or (oddly) France.

Seriously, this is what you are looking for. However, if you are also looking for non-fiction there is a ton of real life material. Everyone and their goat was writing adventure memoirs in that time.

 

[tropicalbob]

How about Conrad and Stevenson? Both of their names say "adventure" to me. Something interesting I noted recently: Conrad dismissed RLS as a "boys' adventure writer," but if you read Stevenson's last story, The Beach at Falesa," it seems remarkably like the stories Conrad would soon write, even in its tone. It's always annoyed me when I've read such dismissals of RLS, especially when you consider the great books and stories he gave us, and the fact that he was only forty-three when he died in Samoa. I think he was just finding a new voice at the time. Really a loss to literature.