ABSTRACT
By the time John Kincaid’s Adventures in the Rifle Brigade was published in 1830, the military memoir had become established in Britain as a recognised and commercially successful literary genre. Gleig’s The Subaltern had been highly significant in the transformation of the genre, de-emphasising the military memoir’s concern with the narrative of a campaign and the experiences of the sentimental ‘military tourist’ 1 to focus on what the Monthly Review termed the ‘theme of military adventure’. 2 Private soldiers continued to publish memoirs, but these declined in popularity in comparison to autobiographical narratives by subaltern officers written in the vein of The Subaltern . Representing the experience of war as an exciting adventure, these officers demonstrated an enormous pride in their professional identity and military achievements. Their work inaugurated nineteenth-century Britain’s fascination with tales of imperial and military adventure. 3
