The Lost World

What It's About

Young journalist Edward Malone, eager to prove himself worthy of the woman he loves, volunteers to join an expedition led by the pugnacious Professor Challenger, who claims to have found a plateau deep in the Amazon where prehistoric life has survived undisturbed. Accompanied by the skeptical Professor Summerlee and the seasoned adventurer Lord John Roxton, the party makes its way into the South American interior, where they find dinosaurs, ape-like creatures, and a lost tribe of humans - and are soon fighting for survival when their route back to civilisation is cut off.

Key Concepts

Published in 1912 amid public fascination with dinosaur fossils and ongoing debates over evolution, the novel plays on the era's excitement about the last unmapped corners of the globe. It is widely regarded as the work that established the "lost world" adventure subgenre, later echoed in stories from King Kong to Jurassic Park. The clash between Challenger's bold intuition and Summerlee's rigid scepticism runs through the book as a study in how far scientific belief should outpace evidence. Modern readers should be aware the novel also reflects the colonial attitudes of its time, particularly in its depiction of the plateau's indigenous inhabitants.

About the Author

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician, born in Edinburgh in 1859. He trained and briefly practised as a doctor before turning to writing full-time. In his later years he became a prominent and outspoken advocate of Spiritualism, a cause to which he devoted much of his later writing and lecturing. He died in 1930.