Fighting for the Right

Fighting for the Right is one of Oliver Optic’s many novels for boys, with the title pointing directly to the moral framework that the wider Optic catalogue treated as the foundation of legitimate combat. The protagonist’s fight is presented as morally justified within the wider American cultural context of the period, with the standard moral and adventure structure of the wider catalogue developing the right cause across the page count.

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.