G.A. Henty 1832-1902 A Bibliographical Study
by Peter Newbolt

 

From 1947 Peter Newbolt spent over ten years in charge of production for a London bookpublisher, and set out to gain serious practical experience of printing, binding, process engraving, typefounding, paper-making, photography, gilding, tanning, and other relevant skills. During this period his book-designs were regularly seen in the Annual Exhibitions at the National Book League. In 1957 he was appointed Adviser to one of the largest printing groups in Europe, and consulted by London publishers, the Clarendon and Oxford University Presses, and publishers in Canada. He worked for the Royal Opera House, and planned the series format of the catalogues raisonnés of the Rothschild Collections at Waddesdon Manor, under their general editor, Sir Anthony Blunt. Following an industrial merger ten years later that appointment ended. Forming his own Company, Newbolt continued much of his earlier work. For twenty years he designed and compiled all UK editions of their international catalogues of recorded music for CBS. He embarked on a photographic survey of mediaeval church buildings in Norfolk. Since 1970 he has been restoring antiquarian books for leading international dealers and collectors, and in that year began this study of Henty's work.

 

At the start of the Crimean War G.A. Henty left Cambridge before taking a degree, and was commissioned in the army. Letters he wrote on active service were shown by his father to a London editor, who published a number, including Henty's account of Florence Nightingale’s arrival at Scutari. From 1865, as war correspondent of the Standard, a leading London daily, he covered many of the minor Victorian campaigns. From 1860 he was one of the most prolific of writers. Of his 120 books the best known are his novels for boys. The first appeared in 1870 and several were still being reprinted in 1970. In this genre Henty developed a new and individual style, combining adventure that appealed to Edwardian prep-school boys, with history whose accuracy met with the approval of parents and educationalists alike. The pictorial bindings of his books from Blackie are known to dealers and collectors as the best examples of their kind. His dozen-or-so novels for adults, for long generally written-off as failures, are now shown to have included remarkable successes. Some, first published as three-deckers, were later re-issued as boys’ books. Indeed, most of Henty’s fiction was popular with readers of all ages. Listings and illustrations given here include over 500 editions and issues of all his books up to the end of the 1920s, his work in newspapers and periodicals, and, for the first time, examples of Henty’s own drawings, sent from Abyssinia in 1868 and printed in the London press. Peter Newbolt gives accounts of Henty’s main publishers, all important in their day, though some, including the eccentric William Tinsley, a character in whom Dickens would have delighted, are now little-known. There are notes on over 100 artists, and essays on the printing, binding, and illustration processes used for Henty’s books. This important contribution to the history of book-publishing will be invaluable to collectors of all authors of the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries.