A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder - Softcover

De Mille, James

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9781479422401: A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1479422401 ISBN 13: 9781479422401

Publisher: Wildside Press, 2016

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"A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder" is the most popular book by James De Mille. It was serialized posthumously (and anonymously) in Harper's Weekly and then published in book form in 1888.

This satiric and fantastic romance is set in an imaginary semi-tropical land in Antarctica inhabited by prehistoric monsters and a cult of death-worshipers called the Kosekin. Begun many years before it was published, it is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" and anticipates the exotic locale and fantasy-adventure elements of works of the "Lost World" genre such as Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World", Edgar Rice Burroughs' "The Land That Time Forgot," as well as innumerable prehistoric-world movies based loosely on these and other works. The title and locale were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle".

It was unfortunate for De Mille's reputation as a writer that this work, his best, was published after H. Rider Haggard's "She" and "King Solomon's Mines," for although Haggard's works were well known by then, the actual composition of De Mille's romance pre-dated the publication of these popular romances, and his ideas were not in the least derivative from Haggard's.

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From the Back Cover:

Drifting on a sailing boat off the Canary Islands, four British gentlemen take turns reading a manuscript that they find inside a copper cylinder discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The manuscript recounts Adam More’s adventures after being lost at sea during an Antarctic voyage in 1844 and his life with the Kosekin, a lost civilization living at the South Pole. The values of the Kosekin are opposed to the civilized norm―they love death, abjection, and poverty. Their society may be well suited to their particular evolution, but it is profoundly disconcerting to the narrator, and it is radically contentious to the Victorian gentlemen who read and debate More’s account.

This Broadview edition of James De Mille’s classic recreates the format of the posthumous 1888 Harper’s Weekly serial, including 18 original illustrations by Gilbert Gaul. The appendices allow the novel to be seen in terms of other satirical and scientific romance, Antarctic exploration, and contemporary geology. The introduction and notes tap into recent scholarship to bring to life De Mille’s genre innovations and his use of Orientalist and colonialist discourses.

About the Author:

JAMES DE MILLE was born in Saint John, NB, in 1833, and educated at Acadia College, Wolfville, NS, and Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. He taught classics at Acadia College, and rhetoric and history at Dalhousie College in Halifax. He had a successful career as a prolific and popular novelist. He died in 1880, and his best known novel, "A Stange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder," was first published posthumously in 1888.

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