James Hannay is best remembered today as a critic: for example, his Studies on Thackeray (1869) was one of the earliest, and in the judgment of some it remains one of the most perceptive, appreciations of that giant among Victorian novelists. But in the 1850s there were those who regarded Hannay himself as one of the leading novelists of the day. One reviewer compared his Singleton Fontenoy RN (1850) to such masterpieces as Dickens's Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), and Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-1848); and the 1856 edition of a mid-Victorian reference work. The Men of the Time, called Eustace Conyers (1855) "one of the cleverest and most charming works of fiction that has appeared in recent years."

Hannay's origins and early life explain much in his writings, both fictional and nonfictional. Descended from two ancient Scottish families, the Hannays and the Afflecks, he joined the Royal Navy...