As well as being the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic (April 15) and the death of Scott of the Antarctic (March 29), 2012 is also the centenary of the publication of The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The novel was published in instalments from April to November 1912 in The Strand magazine before being published in book form.
The plot is simple enough. Journalist Edward Malone is persuaded to join an expedition led by the intimidating Professor Challenger, along with Lord John Roxton and the sceptical Professor Summerlee, to a volcanic plateau deep in the Amazon forest where, to their amazement, dinosaurs still live, along with a race of primitive ape-men who capture our heroes, and more modern native Indians who help release them. There are thrills and spills a-plenty.
What I’d forgotten was the book’s humour. No fewer than 6 of the 16 chapters are taken up with the Wellsian comedy of Malone’s forlorn love affair with the fickle Gladys, and the rambunctious character of Professor Challenger, always ready to use physical violence at the slightest provocation. The book ends on a broad comic note when the returning Malone discovers that the fickle Gladys has gone and married a solicitor’s clerk in his absence.
The theme of dinosaurs living on into the modern world had been invented by Jules Vernes in Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), an extraordinary act of imaginative innovation. But Conan Doyle’s 1912 treatment seems to have been the one which opened the floodgates.
To date there have been seven film or TV versions and six radio or audio adaptations. I like this jacket cover for its figure of a screaming damsel. There are no women on the expedition. She has been added – as women were added to the film versions – for purely pulp or sensationalist reasons.
Books & Boots 