The Island of Doctor Moreau and Other Stories (Wordsworth Classics) - Softcover

H G Wells

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840227400 ISBN 13: 9781840227406

Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2017

Synopsis

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Emily Alder, Lecturer in Literature and Culture at Edinburgh Napier University

'Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say: this time I will burn out all the animal, this time I will make a rational creature of my own!' declares Doctor Moreau to hapless narrator Edward Prendick.

Moreau's highly controversial methods and ambitions conflict with the religious, moral and scientific norms of his day and Wells later called The Island of Doctor Moreau 'a youthful exercise in blasphemy'. Today his vivid depictions of the Beast People still strike modern readers with an uncanny glimpse of the animal in the human, while the behaviour of humans leave us wondering who is the most monstrous after all.

This volume unites four of Wells' liveliest and most engaging tales of the strange evolution and behaviour of animals - including human beings. The Island of Doctor Moreau is followed by three fantastic yet chillingly plausible short stories of human-animal encounters. The Empire of the Ants is a darkly humorous account of intelligent Amazonian ants threatening to displace humans as 'the lords of the future and masters of the earth'. In The Sea Raiders, the south coast of England is terrorized by an unwelcome visit from deep-sea predator Haploteuthis ferox, while AEpyornis Island provides a marooned egg collector with an unusual companion.

About this title

About the Author

Darryl Jones has taught at Trinity College Dublin since 1994. Prior to this he taught in the University of Lodz, Poland. He has held Visiting Professorships at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Babes Bolyai University, Cluj, Transylvania, and Tongji University, Shanghai. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Horror: A Thematic History in Fiction and Film (Arnold/OUP 2002), It Came From the 1950s! Popular Culture, Popular Anxieties (with Elizabeth McCarthy and Bernice M. Murphy, Palgrave Macmillan 2011), and for Oxford World's Classics, M. R. James, Collected Ghost Stories (OUP, 2011, 2013).

Review

"A grisly Darwinian heart-of-darkness fantasy." Daily Telegraph --.

"A master writer." Guardian --.

"The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of those books that, once read, is rarely forgotten." Margaret Atwood --.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1840227400
• ISBN 13: 9781840227406
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192