The Lost World (Doyle novel)
The Lost World, a 1912 adventure novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, began with a startlingly bold ambition. While writing it, Doyle told his editor, Herbert Greenhough Smith: "My ambition is to do for the boys' book what Sherlock Holmes did for the detective story". The creator of the most famous detective in fiction was aiming at a very different crowd. He wanted an adventure that boys would devour and that adults could enjoy just as much. The book sends an expedition to a remote plateau in the Amazon basin of South America, where dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals still survive. It also shows something stranger than any single beast. How did a young reporter, a furious zoologist and a seasoned hunter end up stranded on that plateau? Which real explorers and campaigners lent Doyle their stories and perhaps their faces? And how did one book's title become the name of a whole kind of fiction?
Edward Malone, a young reporter at the Daily Gazette, wanted to impress a woman named Gladys. She longed for a great man who was capable of brave deeds. Malone went to his editor, McArdle, and asked for a dangerous assignment. The job was to approach the notorious Professor Challenger, whose recent South American expedition was surrounded by controversy.
Malone posed as an earnest student to get through the professor's door. Challenger saw through the act within minutes. He confirmed that Malone's scientific knowledge was nonexistent, then erupted in anger and threw him out by force.
A policeman had watched Malone land in the street, and Malone refused to press charges. That decision won Challenger's respect. The professor ushered him back inside and extracted promises of confidentiality. Then he revealed his secret. He had found living dinosaurs in South America, following the trail of a now-deceased American explorer named Maple White.
Professor Challenger is a hairy, burly man with a thick beard and a volatile temper, and the story plays his appearance for laughs. His wife, Jessie Challenger, objects to his belligerent behaviour. Malone himself is of Irish background and an athletic rugby player.
A tumultuous public meeting followed, where Challenger faced fresh ridicule. The loudest doubter was a professional rival, the older zoologist Professor Summerlee. Malone volunteered to travel south and verify the discoveries. His companions would be Summerlee and Lord John Roxton, a widely travelled adventurer and big-game hunter. Roxton had helped end slavery on the Amazon, and the notches on his rifle counted the slavers he had killed doing so. Those notches would soon matter, because one of the hired porters had a personal grudge against him.
Hostile tribes lined the route, and the expedition ran a gauntlet to reach the lost world. Indigenous guides led the way, though they were superstitiously scared of the area. Summerlee kept his arrogance and his skepticism the whole way. Then a pterodactyl swooped down, stole the companions' dinner, and was seen by everyone at close range. Summerlee apologised to Challenger.
The party spent time exploring the entire base of the plateau for a way to the top. A former route up was now blocked by a rock slide. At one spot below the cliff they found human bones. These were identified as James Colver, Maple White's companion, who had somehow fallen to his death.
The cliffs looked unscalable, but an adjacent pinnacle could be climbed. A wide gap separated it from the plateau. Challenger worked out that a tall tree on the pinnacle could be cut down and used as a bridge. All four explorers crossed it.
Gomez, one of the hired porters, had been waiting for his chance. He was a former slaver, and Roxton had killed his brother during the anti-slavery campaign. Gomez dropped the tree off the cliff and left the party trapped. Roxton shot him dead.
The other guide was then killed by another porter, Zambo, a formerly enslaved man who stayed loyal to the explorers. Zambo could do little more than send some of the supplies across by rope. The stranded party named their prison Maple White Land, in honour of the American who had found it.
A herd of Iguanodons grazing in a glade gave the explorers their first great sight. Doyle describes them as looking "like monstrous kangaroos, twenty feet in length, and with skins like black crocodiles". The Accala Indians, the human inhabitants of the plateau, treat these dinosaurs like cattle.
The pterodactyls proved far less peaceful. The party came upon a rookery around a swampy pit in a former volcanic blow-hole and barely escaped with their lives. Even then, Roxton took a keen interest in some blue clay deposits nearby.
That night a ferocious theropod threatened to break through the fence of thorn bushes around the camp. Challenger and Summerlee argue over whether it is a Megalosaurus or an Allosaurus. The narrator calls its bulk "larger than the largest elephant" and compares its shape to "horrible toads". Roxton saved the camp by dashing at the creature and thrusting a blazing torch into its face.
Malone went out alone the next night and studied the animals near the central lake. He saw Glyptodons, which Doyle describes only as large armadillos, and Irish elks. He also saw a Stegosaurus, an animal Maple White had sketched in his notebook. Elsewhere the book offers a Plesiosaurus that delights Summerlee, an Ichthyosaurus caught in the tribe's net, and a Toxodon, a "giant ten-foot guinea pig, with projecting chisel teeth".
One of the oddest threats is a giant flightless predatory bird that Doyle calls the "phororacos". It chases and attacks Challenger, and Roxton kills it and keeps the skull as a trophy.
Malone barely escaped a Megalosaurus that night. Running in the dark, he fell into a deep pit dug to trap and impale animals. Somebody had dug it, and that was proof that humans lived on the plateau.
Malone climbed out of the pit and walked back to the camp, only to find the others missing and signs of a violent attack. The next morning Roxton arrived. He had escaped from a race of "ape-men" who captured the party on the night Malone visited the lake. While held captive, the explorers learned that a tribe of indigenous people, at war with the ape-men, lived on the other side of the plateau.
Roxton and Malone took their rifles and set out to mount a rescue. At the ape-men's village they saw an Indian hurled off the cliff while the hairy creatures cheered. Doyle presents these beings as "an advance upon the pithecanthropus of Java", nearer than any known form to "the missing link".
Challenger, as a captive, enjoyed special status because he physically resembled the ape-men's king. He tried in vain to save Summerlee from the same fate as the Indian. Roxton opened the rescue by shooting the king dead. He and Malone then fired repeatedly, preventing the ape-men from throwing Summerlee and the other captured tribe members over the edge.
One of the rescued Indians was a young prince of the tribe, and the survivors took the party back to their village. With the explorers' firepower behind them, the tribe returned and defeated the ape-men. They slaughtered all the adult males, and most were driven off the cliff. The tribe, having seen the power of the guns, wished to keep the explorers on the plateau.
Challenger meanwhile asked Roxton to capture a pterodactyl chick. Roxton planned to use a protective wooden cage to guard against the adult pterodactyls. The grateful prince gave the explorers a crude map of the caves in the hillside near the village. With it they found a tunnel leading back to the outside world and escaped by night, descending on a rope. The chick would become the proof they carried home.
Queen's Hall in London was the setting for the final test of the expedition's story. Many detractors still dismissed the account. Challenger answered them by producing the young pterodactyl, which transfixed the audience and left them in no doubt of the truth.
The explorers were instantly feted as heroes. Cheering crowds carried them shoulder-high from the hall. In the confusion the pterodactyl made its escape. It was witnessed several times at different places around London and caused consternation wherever it went. It was last seen heading southwest, in the probable direction of its home.
A private celebratory dinner brought one more revelation. Roxton told the others that the blue clay on the plateau contained diamonds. A recollection of a similar feature in South Africa had tipped him off. He had extracted about £200,000 worth, equal to £23 million in 2021, and it was to be split between them.
Challenger planned to open a private museum with his share. Summerlee planned to retire and categorise fossils. Malone went back to Gladys, hoping she would finally recognise his achievements.
Gladys had changed her mind and married a very ordinary man, an insignificant clerk. Astonished, and with nothing left to keep him in London, Malone decided to go back to the lost world with Roxton.
On the 13th of February 1911, Doyle sat in the audience at the Royal Geographical Society to hear a lecture by his good friend Percy Harrison Fawcett. Fawcett had organised several expeditions to delimit the border between Bolivia and Brazil, an area of potential conflict between the two countries. He described a remote "province of Caupolican", present-day Huanchaca Plateau in Bolivia. It was a dangerous region of impenetrable forests where Fawcett saw "monstrous tracks of unknown origin".
Fawcett later wrote in his posthumously published memoirs that "Monsters from the dawn of Man's existence might still roam these heights unchallenged, imprisoned and protected by unscalable cliffs." He recalled showing Doyle photographs of the hills and promising information for a novel. A 1996 Science Fiction Studies review of an annotated edition suggested another possible inspiration. It pointed to the contested political history of the Pacaraima Mountains plateaux in the 1890s, and Mount Roraima in particular.
Several of the characters trace back to living people. Malone and Roxton were modelled, respectively, on the journalist E. D. Morel and the diplomat Roger Casement. Both men led the Congo Free State reform campaign through the Congo Reform Association, which Doyle supported. In 1911, just as Doyle was writing, Casement made a second anti-slavery reform campaign in the Amazonian part of Peru.
Bertram Fletcher Robinson, a close friend of Doyle, may also have shaped Malone. Like Malone, Fletcher Robinson was raised in the West Country and stood over six feet tall. He became an accomplished rugby union player, worked as a London-based journalist, and loved a woman called Gladys. He and Fawcett both attended Newton Abbot Proprietary School between 1882 and 1885, so the two were likely acquainted.
Zoologist Ray Lankester's book Extinct Animals gave Doyle another factual foundation for the creatures themselves. Accounts by explorers, most notably Fawcett, supplied the geography and the danger.
The Strand Magazine began running the novel in April 1912, with illustrations by the New-Zealand-born artist Harry Rountree. Instalments appeared there through November. Magazines in the United States serialized it from March to November 1912. Hodder & Stoughton published the first book edition in October 1912 in London, with printings in New York and Toronto.
Robert Louis Stevenson and H. Rider Haggard had made the 19th-century boy's adventure story popular, and Doyle borrowed their mode. His opening epigraph declared that the book was written to appeal to adults as well. Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which humans meet prehistoric creatures living deep inside the planet, was a direct influence. So were Haggard's lost-kingdom tales King Solomon's Mines and She: A History of Adventure.
Doyle also mixed in humor, satirizing academic rivalries and sensational journalism. The book even opens with a Foreword announcing the withdrawal of a supposed injunction and libel suit against its publication by Professor Challenger.
The title outlived the story. The book was translated into multiple languages soon after it appeared, and the 1925 silent film version boosted its fame. The phrase "lost world" came to label a whole subgenre of adventure, fantasy and science fiction set in distant or hidden places where ancient creatures, races or civilizations survive into modern times. The novel is widely considered one of Doyle's best, and it has never been out of print.
Michael Crichton reused the title in 1995 for his sequel to Jurassic Park, which also became the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Greg Bear's 1998 novel Dinosaur Summer is a sequel to Doyle's book, set in an alternate history 1947. In Bear's version, The Lost World is a nonfiction work that Doyle published as told to him by Professor Challenger.
Film versions include theatrical releases in 1925 and 1960. Direct-to-video films followed in 1992-1998 and 2005, along with the 1992 sequel Return to the Lost World. A television series ran from 1999 to 2002, and a documentary called The Real Lost World appeared in 2006.
Radio gave the story many lives too. In 1944, John Dickson Carr narrated every character in one version, and the BBC Light Programme aired a serial in 1949. A 1966 audio drama titled Dinosaurs! cast Basil Rathbone as Professor Challenger and dropped Lord John Roxton entirely. BBC Radio 4 broadcast Classic Serial versions in 1975 and 2011. The 2011 cast replaced Professor Summerlee with Dr. Diana Summerlee, played by Jasmine Hyde.
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Common questions
Who wrote The Lost World and when was it published?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Lost World, and it appeared in 1912. It ran in the Strand Magazine from April to November 1912, and Hodder & Stoughton issued the first book edition in October 1912.
What is The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle about?
The Lost World follows an expedition to a remote plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals still survive. The party is led by Professor Challenger and narrated by the journalist Edward Malone.
Who are the main characters in The Lost World?
The main characters are Professor George Edward Challenger, the reporter Edward Malone, the skeptical Professor Summerlee and the hunter Lord John Roxton. Zambo, a loyal porter, and Gladys Hungerton, Malone's love interest, also play key roles.
What real events inspired The Lost World?
Percy Harrison Fawcett's expeditions in Bolivia inspired The Lost World. Doyle attended Fawcett's lecture to the Royal Geographical Society on the 13th of February 1911, and Fawcett's account of monstrous tracks of unknown origin impressed him.
Which dinosaurs and prehistoric animals appear in The Lost World?
The plateau holds Iguanodons, pterodactyls, a Stegosaurus, a Plesiosaurus, an Ichthyosaurus, a Toxodon and a giant predatory bird Doyle calls the phororacos. Ape-men also live there.
Why is The Lost World important to adventure fiction?
The Lost World gave its name to the lost world subgenre of adventure, fantasy and science fiction set in hidden places where ancient creatures or civilizations survive. It has never been out of print.
What books and films were inspired by The Lost World?
Michael Crichton reused the title for his 1995 sequel to Jurassic Park, and Greg Bear wrote the 1998 sequel Dinosaur Summer. Film adaptations include versions released in 1925 and 1960.
All sources
12 references cited across the entry
- 2BookTeller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan DoyleDaniel Stashower — Henry Holt & Company — 1999
- 6Conan Doyle, 'The Lost World' & DevonPaul Spiring — BFRonline — 2008
- 7BookSecret Cities of Old South AmericaHarold T. Wilkins — Cosmo Inc. — 1998
- 8BookTeller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan DoyleDaniel Stashower — Henry Holt & Co — 1999
- 11BookExploration FawcettP. H. Fawcett et al. — The Overlook Press — 2010
- 12JournalLost Worlds and Lost OpportunitiesEverett Bleiler — November 1996