The Lion of Saint Mark: A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century

The Lion of St Mark is one of the best 'books for boys' that Henty wrote. Full of danger and adventure, it also provides an easily absorbed historical background that lets the reader feel at home in the period (the late 14teenth century) and so become drawn into the tale. Henty wrote in the last three decades of Queen Victoria's reign, when the British Empire's manifest destiny, it seemed, was to civilize a barbarous world, and Henty's chief purpose was to encourage in youths a manly and enterprising spirit: this, Francis Hammond(the English hero of the story), has in spades; his very practical, yet ingenious, solutions to meet near insurmountable difficulties makes the reader aware that not every seeming impossible problem is without a solution - or at least a way of getting around it. Henty has had his critics over the years for promoting a too narrow, nationalistic spirit; however, since one of the youths who grew up in the late Victorian age was a certain Winston Churchill (surely enterprise personified), we may afford to take a broader view. Recommended for readers of all times and ages.