The 2. 00 Greatest Adventure Novels of All Time – Hi. Lobrow. What follows is a list of two hundred of my favorite adventure novels published before the Eighties (1. ![]()
They’re organized not qualitatively — that would be impossible — but chronologically. I’ve also listed another two hundred fifty second- tier favorite adventures, which you can peruse via the following posts: Best 1. Century Adventure (1. Here’s a list of the 1. Best Radium Age Science Fiction Novels; and (in progress) the 7. Best Golden Age Science Fiction Novels. Also, please check out these additional lists. Lung cancer is the largest single cause of deaths from cancer in the world 1-3 and is expected to account for more than 160,000 deaths in the United States during. Books Advanced Search New Releases NEW! Amazon Charts Best Sellers & More The New York Times® Best Sellers Children's Books Textbooks Textbook Rentals Sell Us Your. Login Name and Password Assistance : Please provide your Email Address, Login Name or both. An email containing your Login Name and password, in plain text, will be. The 2. 00 Greatest Adventure Novels of All Time. THE OUGHTS (1. 90. THE TEENS (1. 91. THE TWENTIES (1. 92. THE THIRTIES (1. 93. THE FORTIES (1. 94. THE FIFTIES (1. 95. THE SIXTIES (1. 96. THE SEVENTIES (1. The goal, eventually, is to publish a Top 1. Adventures list for every year of the 2. Finally, I’ve broken out the overall list of four hundred fifty top adventures into the following sub- genre lists: 1. Science Fiction Adventures ! And please let me know what I’ve overlooked. That’s a lot of adventure fans! UPDATE: As of February 2. Why does my Top Adventures List project stop in 1. I figure that adventure fans already know which adventure novels from the Eighties, Nineties, and Twenty- Oughts are worth reading; so I’m interested in directing attention to older, sometimes obscure or forgotten adventures. Also, I have friends who’ve published adventures since 1. I don’t want these lists to be biased! In chronological order: 1. Walter Scott’s 1. The novel — which sends a young Englishman adventuring in the highlands of Scotland, during the Jacobite uprising which sought to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the British throne — is regarded as the first historical novel. Note that Scotland, that savage tribal land just across the border from hyper- civilized England, was the original adventure frontier. Mary Shelley’s Gothic science fiction adventure Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. From multiple points of view, we read about a brilliant scientist and his creation: a dehumanized creature who longs for love and friendship and, eventually, revenge. PS: There are two editions of the book; the 1. Walter Scott’s 1. Who can it be?) This popular book was single- handedly responsible for the medievalist craze in early 1. England. 1. 82. 6. James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier adventure The Last of the Mohicans. Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales were popular and influential (esp. Despite its flaws — there are many! Charles Dickens’s crime adventure Oliver Twist. A great adventure, and the Artful Dodger is such a memorable character. Edgar Allan Poe’s Gothic sea adventure The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Poe’s only complete novel — about a teenager who stows away on a ship, is kidnapped by mutineers and pirates, encounters cannibals, and explores the Antarctic before discovering the key to all Western mystical traditions — has been described as “at once a mock nonfictional exploration narrative, adventure saga, bildungsroman, hoax, largely plagiarized travelogue, and spiritual allegory.” 1. Alexandre Dumas’s 1. It is their sanguine companion D’Artagnan who coins the classic phrase “All for one, and one for all!”1. Alexandre Dumas’s avenger- type adventure The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s all here: a wronged man seeking revenge, a jailbreak, poisonings, smugglers, a sex slave (spoiler: she’s freed), and a treasure cave. Serialized in 1. 17 installments, it’s on the long side; still, according to Luc Sante, this story is today as “immediately identifiable as Mickey Mouse, Noah’s flood, and the story of Little Red Riding Hood.” 1. James Fenimore Cooper’s sea- going adventure The Crater. Fun fact: Adventure aficionados consider this one much superior to his Leatherstocking tales! Herman Melville’s sea- going adventure Moby- Dick is, we all know, much more than it appears to be on the surface. It is an allegory of (maybe) man’s gnostic rage against the occluded world in which he lives, separated from real reality. Perhaps more than you want to know about how whaling works, but one of the all- time great yarns. Lewis Carroll’s fantasy adventure Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Wilkie Collins’s detective adventure The Moonstone. Generally considered the first English- language detective novel. Jules Verne’s science- fiction adventure Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea introduces us to Captain Nemo, a scientific genius who roams the depths of the sea in his submarine — in quest of treasure, knowledge, and revenge. NB: The book inspired Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Le Beateau Ivre.”1. Jules Verne’s science- fiction Robinsonade The Mysterious Island. An engineer, a sailor, a young boy, a journalist, and an African American butler escape a Civil War prison in a hot air balloon and crash land on a Lost- type island in the South Pacific. Who is observing them, helping them? Marred by didactic lessons of all sorts. Jules Verne’s espionage adventure Michael Strogoff, considered one of Verne’s best books. When the Tartar Khan incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, Michael Strogoff, courier for Tsar Alexander II, is sent to Irkutsk on a crucial mission. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1. Note that the castaway character Ben Gunn is a parody of Daniel Defoe’s character Robinson Crusoe! Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — note that Twain, who scorned Walter Scott- type romances, uses the term “adventure” sardonically. He was poking holes in the prevailing sentimental and Romantic ethos of the literary establishment. Still, Twain’s novel is a fun romp through the American South in its grotesquerie, and it offers authentic thrills along the way. Rider Haggard’s frontier adventure King Solomon’s Mines, which set a new standard for thrills — thanks to the author’s illiberal belief that denizens of England are so coddled that they’ve forgotten their own savage nature. The first novel written in English that was based on the African continent, and the first “Lost World” adventure. NB: Haggard would write 1. Allan Quatermain, the hero of King Solomon’s Mines. Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1. With the help of Alan Breck, a daring Jacobite, David escapes and travels across Scotland by night — hiding from government soldiers by day. Rider Haggard’s treasure hunt/occult adventure She. Weird fun, particularly if you like reincarnation stuff. Spoiler: In a later novel, She and Quatermain will cross paths! Rudyard Kipling’s Haggard- esque frontier adventure The Man Who Would Be King. Two British adventurers become kings of a remote part of Afghanistan, because — it turns out — the Kafirs there practice a form of Masonic ritual and the adventurers know Masonic secrets. Arthur Conan Doyle’s knightly adventure The White Company. Perhaps more of an ironic homage to than a sardonic inversion of the genre. Actually one of his best adventures! Rider Haggard’s Viking adventure Eric Brighteyes. Considered one of his best books. Anthony Hope’s swashbuckling adventure The Prisoner of Zenda, which takes place in the fictional central European country of Ruritania, and which concerns a political decoy restoring the rightful king to the throne, was so influential that its genre is now called Ruritanian. Perhaps the first political thriller. Wells’s science fiction adventure The Island of Doctor Moreau. Edward Prendick, a shipwrecked man, is left on the island home of Doctor Moreau, who creates human- like beings from animals. After Moreau is killed, the Beast Folk begin to revert to their original animal instincts. Bram Stoker’s supernatural horror adventure Dracula, whose readers know what kind of monster the protagonists seek before they do. Described by Neil Gaiman as a “Victorian high- tech thriller,” the book’s use of cutting- edge technology — and true- crime story telling, from newspaper clippings to phonograph- recorded notes — creates an eerily realistic vibe. Alfred Jarry’s ’pataphysical adventure Gestes et Opinions du Docteur Faustroll, Pataphysicien. Faustroll and his monkey butler travel around Paris — on a mythical register — in a high- tech boat/vehicle. Published posthumously, in 1. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the protagonist of which is sent up a river in Africa to seek the European manager of a remote ivory station who has turned into a charismatic monster, is a sardonic inversion of yarns by adventure authors who didn’t give much thought to the colonialist and racist context within which their civilization- vs.- savagery narratives played out. The horror!”1. 90. Rudyard Kipling’s espionage adventure Kim, in which an Irish orphan in India not only becomes the disciple of a Tibetan lama, but is recruited by the British secret service to spy on Russian agents participating in the Great Game. In the process, he races across India; Kipling — an imperialist, but a keen observer of India all the same — brilliantly captures the essence of that country under the British Raj. Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective mystery adventure The Hound of the Baskervilles. Mystery adventures don’t have a large place on these lists of mine. Conan Doyle, however, is a great adventure writer. And this novel is not your typical Sherlock Holmes story; it is jam- packed with thrills and chills. Robert Erskine Childers’s espionage adventure The Riddle of the Sands can be a demanding read for those with no interest in sailing or timetables. But it’s a thrilling yarn nevertheless, one which sought to alert British readers to the danger of German invasion. Its protagonists are archetypes of the amateur adventure hero, the likes of whom would later appear so memorably in the novels of John Buchan. PS: Note that London’s White Fang shows the flipside of this trajectory. Jack London’s sea- going adventure The Sea Wolf. A clash of opposing philosophies, one of which — quasi- Nietzschean; more accurately Social Darwinist — is embodied by Wolf Larsen, a brutal yet enigmatic sea captain.
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