Henty Books in Chronological Order for History Immersion

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With three boys who are voracious readers, we have the ultimate challenge of finding wholesome books that they want to read. One set of books that we found and both the boys and I love are G.A. Henty books. Even though his books are fiction, they are historical fiction and provide a great vision of the era he was writing about. His books are historically accurate and are full of noble character traits… traits we want to instill in our boys such as: honesty, chivalry, integrity, courage, loyalty, honor, hard work, charity, justice, and the list goes on and on. Henty was masterful at weaving action and adventure throughout his novels!  Putting the Henty Books in chronological order has helped me organize his books into our schedule to be more useful in our homeschool.

Here is a brief bio of GA Henty from Wikipedia:

George Alfred Henty, was a prolific English novelist and a special correspondent. He is best known for his historical adventure stories that were popular in the late 19th century.  His children’s novels typically revolved around a boy or young man living in troubled times. These ranged from the Punic War to more recent conflicts such as the Napoleonic Wars or the American Civil War. Henty’s heroes – which occasionally included young ladies – are uniformly intelligent, courageous, honest and resourceful with plenty of ‘pluck’ yet are also modest.  These virtues have made Henty’s novels popular today among many Christians and homeschoolers.

Reasons you might want to include Henty as part of your children’s reading goes directly to character!  Quote from the Henty site:  

G. A. Henty lived during a time in which honesty, integrity, hard work, courage, diligence, perseverance, personal honor and a strong Christian faith were greatly valued. This was especially true of members of the British armed forces, of which Henty was a part. As a consequence, Henty’s heroes are models of these virtues of personal character – and always owe their successes to these characteristics.  The young reader identifies with Henty’s heroes while he is vicariously reliving their experiences as he reads. These heroes become, for the duration of the story, his peers and examples – and, children learn, almost entirely, by example.  American and British educators a century ago were as much concerned in building good character in their students as they were in imparting to them academic knowledge. This accounts for the great popularity of Henty’s works during that golden period of education.

My oldest son, Chase, has started reviewing the books he has read and the first Henty book was Cat of Bubastes. You can read his review here. Read for yourself what a teen thinks of the Henty books! We are using the Henty books as an immersion in our historical studies… to better understand the culture and time. I hope this list will be beneficial to you and your homeschool as well!! I will be creating many lists over the course of our homeschooling years to help you find books that instill honor and character in our boy’s reading experiences.  

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Trish Corlew

Founder and Author at Live and Learn Farm

Trish has been married to her best friend, David, for 16 years and they have three sons (aged 13, 12 and 9). Trish is from the coast of North Carolina, but they now live in rural West Tennessee on a 40+ acre farm. She has been homeschooling since 2009 and her homeschool style leans towards a Montessori approach with a heavy emphasis on hands-on learning. They also own a small business that Trish runs from home. Trish’s family is Messianic and they love studying the Scriptures, learning Hebrew and growing in their faith and walk daily. In her spare time, Trish loves to write, work in their garden and can regularly be found trying to learn something new, modeling that learning is indeed a life-long endeavor!

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