Seek and Find

Seek and Find is one of Oliver Optic’s many novels for boys, working in his standard rags to respectability formula. The seek and find premise hints at the kind of search and discovery plot that drives the central narrative, with the young protagonist undertaking some particular quest that leads through the various adventures and moral tests that the genre required.

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 standard plot beats of the wider Optic catalogue follow. The protagonist undertakes the search, faces the various dangers and challenges, demonstrates the courage and moral character that the genre required, and earns the respectability that the wider series is built around.

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.