Plane and plank

Plane and Plank is one of Oliver Optic’s many novels for boys, with the title drawing from the carpenter and woodworking trade that the central character’s path involves. The plane and plank tools point to a particular skilled trade setting that the protagonist’s adventures unfold within, with the standard moral and character development of the wider Optic catalogue framed within the trade learning context.

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. The trade setting fiction was a recurring corner of his wider catalogue, with various novels using specific trades as the framework for the central protagonist’s path to respectability.

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