The Lost World

A 1912 adventure novel by Arthur Conan Doyle in which an expedition discovers prehistoric animals surviving on an isolated South American plateau.

Maple White Land: The isolated South American plateau in The Lost World, named for an explorer who first found it. This plateau is the expedition’s destination and the setting for its discoveries.
Arthur Conan Doyle: A British writer and physician best known for creating Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger. Doyle created the novel and its expedition of scientists and explorers.
Evolution: The change in inherited characteristics of populations across generations. The survival of prehistoric animals invokes the deep timescale of evolution.
The Lost World (1925 film): A silent American adventure film adapting Doyle’s novel, notable for Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion dinosaurs. Its effects brought the novel’s prehistoric creatures to the screen.
Professor Challenger: A brilliant, combative scientist created by Arthur Conan Doyle, first appearing in The Lost World. His disputed claim about the plateau drives the expedition.
Edgar Rice Burroughs: An American novelist whose adventure fiction includes Tarzan and the prehistoric setting of Pellucidar. His later lost-world adventures developed a neighboring form of popular fiction.
Island biogeography: The study of how isolation, area, and colonization shape species diversity on islands. The plateau functions like an ecological island cut off from surrounding environments.
King Kong: A 1933 American film about a giant ape captured on an isolated island and taken to New York. Its island of prehistoric creatures extends the lost-world adventure tradition.
Edward Malone: An Irish journalist and narrator in The Lost World who joins the expedition to prove his courage. His reports frame the journey and its dangers.
Victorian scientific romance: A nineteenth-century literary genre combining speculative science, adventure, and fantastic journeys. The novel adapts this tradition into an early twentieth-century adventure.

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