His imperial ideas and enthusiasms found fullest expression, though, in the eighty-odd adventure tales he wrote for adolescent boys.
George Alfred Henty was born in Trumpington, near Cambridge, but was raised near Canterbury, where his father, a successful stockbroker and coal-mine owner, established a home. In contrast to the singularly robust youths he portrayed in his boys' books, Henty was a sickly child and until the age of fourteen was "practically a confirmed invalid." Thanks to a regimen involving repeated doses of magnesia, salts, and senna, his health improved, and in 1847 he was sent to Westminster School in London. Five years later he went up to Caius College, Cambridge, to read for a degree in Classics. Yet while he excelled in varsity sports, such as cricket, rowing, and boxing, Henty did not enjoy academic life, and in 1853, after only a year's study, he left the university. He returned to London, where he drifted aimlessly through an assortment of odd jobs; he also spent a bleak period working for his father's collieries in South Wales. In 1855, however, his fortunes improved, for in October of that year he was commissioned a lieutenant in the army purveyor's department.
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