Outward Bound

Outward Bound is one of Oliver Optic’s many novels for boys in his nautical adventure series, with the outward bound phrase pointing to the start of a sea voyage that takes the protagonist from his home port out into the wider world. The novel uses the voyage outward as the structural framework for the various adventures that the protagonist encounters across the journey, with the standard moral and character development of the wider Optic catalogue unfolding within the nautical setting.

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. His nautical fiction was popular both for its adventure content and for the practical sailing knowledge that young readers absorbed through the plots.

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.