1. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
2. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
3. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
4. The Coral Island – R.M. Ballantyne
5. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
6. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
7. Robin Hood – howard Pyle
8. Heidi – Johanna Spyri
9. Swiss Family Robinson – Johan Wyss
10. Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
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1. Treasure
Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis
Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Scotland and journeyed widely, from Spain to
the
California Gold-fields, finally setting in Samoa, where he died. Treasure
Island has become one of the
world’s best-loved adventure stories.
The story begin with
a mysterious treasure map and an old
buccaneer in an English country inn. Soon
we are in the high seas in a
dangerous quest that becomes a desperate battle of wits between young Jim
Hawkins and unforgettable wity old pirate Long John Silver.
2. King
Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Allan
Quatermain, an adventurer and
white
hunter based in
Durban, in what is now South Africa, is approached by
aristocrat
Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good,
seeking his help finding Sir Henry's brother, who was last seen travelling
north into the unexplored interior on a quest for the fabled King Solomon's
Mines. Quatermain has a mysterious map purporting to lead to the mines, but had
never taken it seriously. However, he agrees to lead an expedition in return
for a share of the treasure, or a stipend for his son if he is killed along the
way. He has little hope they will return alive, but reasons that he has already
outlived most people in his profession, so dying in this manner at least
ensures that his son will be provided for. They also take along a mysterious
native, Umbopa, who seems more regal, handsome and well-spoken than most
porters of his class, but who is very anxious to join the party.
Travelling by oxcart, they reach the edge of a
desert, but not before a hunt in which a wounded elephant claims the life of a
servant. They continue on foot across the desert, almost dying of thirst before
finding the oasis shown halfway across on the map. Reaching a mountain range
called Suliman Berg, they climb a peak (one of "
Sheba's
Breasts") and enter a cave where they find the frozen corpse of
José
Silvestre (also spelt Silvestra), the 16th-century Portuguese explorer who
drew the map in his own blood. That night, a second servant dies from the cold,
so they leave his body next to Silvestra's, to "give him a
companion". They cross the mountains into a raised valley, lush and green,
known as Kukuanaland. The inhabitants have a well-organised army and society
and speak an ancient dialect of
IsiZulu. Kukuanaland's capital is Loo, the destination of a
magnificent road from ancient times. The city is dominated by a central royal
kraal.
3. Robinson
Crusoe – Daniel Dafoe
Robinson Crusoe,
as a young and impulsive wanderer, defied his parents and went to sea. He was
involved in a series of violent storms at sea and was warned by the captain
that he should not be a seafaring man. Ashamed to go home, Crusoe boarded
another ship and returned from a successful trip to Africa. Taking off again,
Crusoe met with bad luck and was taken prisoner in Sallee. His captors sent
Crusoe out to fish, and he used this to his advantage and escaped, along with a
slave.
He was rescued by
a Portuguese ship and started a new adventure. He landed in Brazil, and, after
some time, he became the owner of a sugar plantation. Hoping to increase his
wealth by buying slaves, he aligned himself with other planters and undertook a
trip to Africa in order to bring back a shipload of slaves. After surviving a
storm, Crusoe and the others were shipwrecked. He was thrown upon shore only to
discover that he was the sole survivor of the wreck.
4. T
he Coral Island – R.M. Ballantyne
The story is written as a first person narrative
from the perspective of 15-year-old Ralph Rover, one of three boys shipwrecked
on the coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island. Ralph tells the story
retrospectively, looking back on his boyhood adventure: "I was a boy when
I went through the wonderful adventures herein set down. With the memory of my
boyish feelings strong upon me, I present my book specially to boys, in the
earnest hope that they may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great
profit, and unbounded amusement from its pages”
Jack, Ralph and Peterkin after reaching the island,
from an 1884 edition of the novel
The account starts briskly; only four pages are
devoted to Ralph's early life and a further fourteen to his voyage to the
Pacific Ocean on board the Arrow. He and his two companions –
18-year-old Jack Martin and 13-year-old Peterkin Gay – are the sole
survivors of the shipwreck. The narrative is in two parts. The first describes
how the boys feed themselves, what they drink, the clothing and shelter they
fashion, and how they cope with having to rely on their own resources. The
second half of the novel is more action-packed, featuring conflicts with
pirates, fighting between the native Polynesians, and the conversion efforts of
Christian missionaries.
5. Kidnapped
– Robert Louis Stevenson
The full title of the book gives away major
parts of the plot and creates the false impression that the
novel is
autobiographical. It is Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David
Balfour in
the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in
a Desert Isle; his
Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan
Breck Stewart and other notorious
Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered
at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of
Shaws, falsely so-called:
Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson.
The central
character and narrator is 17-year-old David Balfour. (Balfour is Stevenson's
mother's
maiden name.) His parents have recently died, and he is out to make
his way in the world. He is givena
letter by the minister of Essendean, Mr.
Campbell, to be delivered to the House of Shaws in Cramond,
where
David's uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, lives. On his journey, David asks many people
where theHouse
of Shaws is, and all of them speak of it darkly as a place of
fear and evil.
6. Jane
Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
The novel is a
first-person narrative from the perspective of the title character. The novel's
setting is somewhere in the north of England, during the reign of George III (1760–1820), and goes
through five distinct stages: Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is
emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at
Lowood School, where she gains friends and role models but suffers privations
and oppression; her time as governess at Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with
her Byronic
employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family, during which her
earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St. John Rivers, proposes to her; and her
reunion with, and marriage to, her beloved Rochester.
During these sections the
novel provides perspectives on a number of important social issues and ideas,
many of which are critical of the status quo (see the Themes
section below). Literary critic Jerome Beaty opines that the close first
person perspective leaves the reader "too uncritically accepting of her
worldview", and often leads reading and conversation about the novel
towards supporting Jane, regardless of how irregular her ideas or perspectives
are.
Jane Eyre is
divided into 38 chapters, and most editions are at least 400 pages long. The
original publication was in three volumes, comprising chapters 1 to 15, 16 to
26, and 27 to 38; this was a common publishing format during the 19th century
7. Robin
Hood – howard pyle
The Robin Hood legend crossed the Atlantic Ocean
early in the British settlement of the American colonies, and it received
perhaps its definitive schoolyard edition in Howard Pyle’s The Merry
Adventures of Robin Hood, which retold twenty tales and included wood-cut
illustrations. Pyle’s text stayed in print throughout the twentieth century. In
1953, Mrs. Thomas White of Indianapolis, a Republican member of Indiana’s state
textbook commission, demanded that references to Robin Hood be removed from
textbooks because the legend promoted the communist doctrine of redistributing
income by robbing from the rich in order to give to the poor. At the same time
White also inveighed against Quakers because she noted that they do not believe
in fighting wars. (It is unclear whether White knew that Howard Pyle was, in
fact, a Quaker.)
In response to White’s statement, Indiana’s state
superintendent of education, Wilbur Young, agreed to reread Robin Hood
in order to consider the merit of the charge. However, the Indianapolis school
superintendent, H. L. Shibler, refused to ban textbook references to Robin
Hood, claiming that he saw nothing subversive about the Robin Hood stories. On
November 14, 1953, The New York Times printed a response from the
current sheriff of Nottingham, who unequivocally stated that “Robin Hood was no
Communist.
8. Heidi
– Johanna Spyri
Heidi is an orphaned
girl initially raised by her aunt Detie in Maienfeld,
Switzerland after the early deaths of her parents, Tobias and Adelheid (Detie's
sister and brother-in-law). Detie brings 6-year-old Heidi to her paternal
grandfather's house, up the mountain from Dörfli. He has
been at odds with the villagers and embittered against God for years and lives
in seclusion on the alm. This has earned him the nickname
Alm-Uncle. He briefly resents Heidi's arrival, but the girl's evident
intelligence and cheerful yet unaffected demeanor soon earn his genuine, if
reserved, affection. Heidi enthusiastically befriends her new neighbors, young
Peter the goatherd,
his mother, Bridget, and his blind maternal grandmother, who is
"Grannie" to everyone. With each season that passes, the mountaintop
inhabitants grow more attached to Heidi.
1. Robin
Hood – howard pyle
9. Swiss
Family Robinson – Johan Wyss
The ship survives
the night and the family finds themselves within sight of a tropical desert
island. The next morning, they decide to get to the island they can see
beyond the reef. With much effort, they construct a vessel out of tubs. After
they fill the tubs with food and ammunition
and all other articles of value they can safely carry, they row toward the
island. Two dogs from
the ship named Turk and Flora swim beside them. The ship's cargo of livestock
(including chickens,
domestic
ducks, domestic geese, and domestic
pigeons), guns & powder, carpentry tools, books, a disassembled pinnace, and provisions have survived.
Upon reaching the
island, the family set up a makeshift camp. The father knows that they must
prepare for a long time on the island and his thoughts are as much on
provisions for the future as for their immediate wants. William and his
oldest son Fritz spend the next day exploring the island.
10. Black
Beauty – Anna Sewell
The story is
narrated in the first person as an autobiographical memoir
told by the titular horse named Black Beauty—beginning with his carefree days
as a colt on an English farm with his mother, to his difficult life pulling
cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets
with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short
chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty's life containing a lesson or
moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment
of horses, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of
horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.
The book describes
conditions among London horse-drawn taxicab drivers,
including the financial hardship caused to them by high licence fees and low,
legally fixed fares.
A page footnote in some editions says that soon after the book was published,
the difference between 6-day taxicab licences (not allowed to trade on Sundays)
and 7-day taxicab licences (allowed to trade on Sundays) was abolished and the
taxicab licence fee was much reduced.
