When Victoria ascended the British throne on 20 June 1837, G. A. Henty was not yet five years old. Yet in thousands of young boys' lives Henty was destined to be as important as the queen. In a 1980 review of the most recent biography of Henty, Eric Stokes commented that "No other writer for the young exercised a tithe of his influence." Henty was one of the most influential of all Victorian children's writers and remained in print for three generations of young British and American readers. The circumstances of his birth are a mystery: he told Captain magazine in 1899 that he was born in the small village of Trumpington, two miles south of Cambridge, England, on 8 December 1832 (the year of the Great Reform Act). This date is usually repeated in subsequent biographies, but parish records show no documentation of a Henty family for the period 1797 to 1890. The admissions register...