Top 10 adventure stories

One rainy holiday, Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the story of Treasure Island to entertain his stepson. The pair agreed that “it was to be a story for boys ... Women were excluded”.

This toon meer gender division was by no means new in adventure stories. In the 18th century, “a lady of adventure” was a prostitute. Early novelists including Aphra Behn, Anne Radcliffe and Charlotte Lennox, and memoirists such as Laetitia Pilkington, wrote stories of women expanding their horizons in far-flung, historical or gothic spaces. The act of publication was often just as scandalous as the contents. Samuel Richardson, whose novel Clarissa (1748) features a woman defending herself from attempted rape for over 1,000 pages, called these authors a “set of wretches” for failing to meet his standards of femininity. Jonathan Swift called Pilkington a “profligate whore”, though he admired her wit – which, we can all agree, was awfully nice of him.

I wanted to ask: what adventures can a woman lead? Where are our stories?

Adventure breaks the bounds of confinement. It’s flexible across genres. It is about the quest to define ourselves. Adventures means freedom. Here are my Top 10.

Kim Sherwood – LT author page toon minder