James De Mille

With its curious mixture of adventure, natural history and satire this early Canadian novel has become a landmark work of fantasy and science fiction.

Alexander Macrorie, the narrator, blithely announces the subject of the novel in the first brief paragraph: 'This is a story of Quebec. Quebec is a wonderful city.' In fact, it is the story of the love trials and tribulations of a young bachelor subaltern and his fellow officers of the 129th Bobtails quartered in Quebec City.

Although not one of De Mille's best works it does show his unerring assessment of the tastes of the American and Canadian reading public in the 1870s. With echoes of Wilkie Collins, Jules Verne, and other popular novelists of the period, this is a sensational melodrama full of impossible adventures, and of 'angelic heroines and villains of the deepest dye.'

The 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. The main story of the novel is the narrative of the adventures of Adam More, a British sailor shipwrecked on a homeward voyage from Tasmania. After passing through a subterranean tunnel of volcanic origin, he finds himself in a "lost world" of prehistoric animals, plants and people sustained by volcanic heat despite the long Antarctic night. James De Mille (23 August 1833 - 28 January 1880) was a professor at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, and an early Canadian popular writer who published numerous works of popular fiction from the late 1860s through the 1870s. He was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, son of the merchant and shipowner, Nathan De Mille. He attended Horton Academy in Wolfville and spent one year at Acadia University. He then travelled with his brother Budd to Europe, spending half a year in England, France and Italy. On his return to North America, he attended Brown University, from which he obtained a Master of Arts degree in 1854. He married Anne Pryor, daughter of the president of Acadia University, John Pryor, and was there appointed professor of classics. He served there until 1865 when he accepted a new appointment at Dalhousie as professor of English and rhetoric. He continued to write and teach at Dalhousie until his early death at the age of 47.