SOURCE: "Popular Literature and Children's Literature," in Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire, Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1979, pp. 203-34.

In the following extract, Green examines the different forms of heroism represented in popular boys' fiction during the nineteenth century.

Tolstoy gives us the sense—proper to high culture and especially to art—that he is questioning and testing whatever he describes; both the modern system, and the adventures of its expansion. Now we must look to narratives and discussions which seem not to test but to advertise their values, which work at a lower artistic and cultural level.

Turning to popular literature will bring out the importance of the how-to-do-it strain of adventure, the Defoe/merchant-caste strain, which gets overshadowed by the chivalric romance when we restrict our attention to works of literary value (serious art being reactionary, and often allied to the aristocracy) but which was very...