Simulating Antiquity in Boys' Adventure Fiction
Maps and Ink Stains

This Element presents 'lost world' adventure fiction as a response to print culture's nineteenth- and twenty-first-century automation.

Thomas Vranken (Author)

9781009158947, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 August 2022

75 pages
17.7 x 12.8 x 0.5 cm, 0.09 kg

A genre that glorifies brutish masculinity and late Victorian imperialism, boys' 'lost world' adventure fiction has traditionally been studied for its politically problematic content. While attuned to these concerns, this Element approaches the genre from a different angle, viewing adventure fiction as not just a catalogue of texts but a corpus of books. Examining early editions of Treasure Island, King Solomon's Mines, and The Lost World, the Element argues that fin-de-siècle adventure fiction sought to resist the nineteenth-century industrialisation of book production from within. As the Element points out, the genre is filled with nostalgic simulations of material anachronisms – 'facsimiles' of fictional pre-modern paper, printing, and handwriting that re-humanise the otherwise alienating landscape of the modern book and modern literary production. The Element ends by exploring a subversive revival of lost world adventure fiction that emerged in response to ebooks at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Introduction
1. Spick and Span New Paper
2. Written as Well as Printed by a Steam Engine
3. Tottery Characters
4. New New Romance
or, New Romance 2.0
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Adventure stories [Children's / Teenage YFC], Children's / Teenage fiction & true stories [YF], Children’s & teenage literature studies [DSY], Literary theory [DSA], Literature: history & criticism [DS]