[Rarebooks] FS: 1896 Gothic Science Fiction Horror "Fearsome Island"

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

TITLE: “The Fearsome Island: Being a Modern Rendering of the Narrative of
Silas Fordred, Master Mariner of Hythe, whose shipwreck and Subsequent
adventures are herein set forth. Also an appendix accounting in a rational
manner for the seeming marvels that Silas Fordred encountered during his
sojourn on the fearsome island of Don Diego Rodriguez”

By Albert Kinross.

Published in Chicago; Printed for Herbert S. Stone & Company at the
Chap-Book offices in the Caxton Building in 1896.

DISCUSSION: An interesting and noteworthy example of late Victorian
Gothic-Revivalism as applied to literature, then mixed with a large dollop
of science-fiction. Master Fordred (of an actual Hythe seafaring family)
is shipwrecked on a small, uncharted Atlantic island in 1560 and soon
discovers that the island's weird, magical happenings (demons anyone? do
you like haunted castles?) are actually the work of one Don Diego
Rodriguez, a refugee from the Spanish Inquisition with a scientific bent,
and an equally bent mind.

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes- "Albert Kinross (1870-1929) was
a UK soldier, editor, journalist and writer in various genres. [In his
book] 'The Fearsome Island: Being a Modern Rendering of the Narrative of
Silas Fordred, Master Mariner of Hythe', a shipwrecked sixteenth-century
adventurer describes in supernatural terms his experiences on an Island
full of alarms and delights, but the Appendix explains that these marvels
are all the Inventions of Don Diego Rodriguez, who had preceded
Christopher Columbus to America. The huge mechanical man is a kind of
Robot; the magical castle is (in twentieth-century terms) alarmed; a
Caliban-like Monster turns out to be a mute human; Fordred and the mute
escape the island on a motorboat".

This is the first American edition, published in the same year as the
first English edition. 1896 was a good year for mariners shipwrecked on
weird islands- it was the same year H.G. Wells published The Island of
Doctor Moreau.

DESCRIPTION: Hardcover. 4.5"x7", 143 pages + 4 pages of publisher's
advertisements. Publisher's green & black pictorial covers.

CONDITION NOTES: Covers with light soil and some color corrosion. Former
owner's name on a small piece of notebook paper glued to the front
flyleaf. Please see the photos.

PRICE:  $100 -

PICTURES =>
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