All Adrift

All Adrift is one of Oliver Optic’s many novels for boys in his nautical adventure series, with the all adrift phrase pointing to the kind of vessel without anchor or direction situation that the central nautical plot may involve. Optic uses the title concept as the structural anchor for the novel, with the various sailing dangers and the wider plot developing around the central adrift situation.

Oliver Optic was the pen name of William Taylor Adams, a Massachusetts writer who became one of the most prolific producers of boys’ fiction in mid to late nineteenth century America with more than a hundred novels.

For scholars of nineteenth century American children’s literature or of the wider career of Oliver Optic, the various novels in his catalogue are essential. Many are now in the public domain.