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A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

by James DE MILLE (1833 - 1880)

The Sight of Human Beings

"A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder" is the most popular of James De Mille's works. It was serialized posthumously in Harper's Weekly, and published in book form by Harper and Brothers of New York City in 1888. This satiric romance is the story of Adam More, a British sailor. Shipwrecked in Antarctica, he stumbles upon a tropical lost world of prehistoric animals, plants, and a cult of death-worshipping primitives. He also finds a highly developed human society which has reversed the values of Victorian society. Wealth is scorned and poverty revered; death and darkness are preferrable to life and light. Rather than accumulating wealth, the natives seek to divest themselves of it as quickly as possible. At the beginning of each year, the government imposes wealth (the burden of "reverse taxation") upon its unfortunate subjects as a form of punishment. A secondary plot about the four yachtsmen who find the manuscript forms a frame for the central narrative. [Condensed from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Strange_Manuscript_Found_in_a_Copper_Cylinder ]

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Listen next episodes of A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder:
A Voyage Over the Pole , Belief and Unbelief , Conclusion , Escape , Falling, like Icarus, into the Sea , Grimm's Law Again , I Learn My Doom , In Prison , Oxenden Preaches a Sermon , Recapture , Scientific Theories and Scepticism , The Awful "Mista Kosek" , The Baleful Sacrifice , The Cave-Dwellers , The Cavern of the Dead , The Ceremony of Separation , The Dark Maiden Layelah , The Day of Sacrifice , The Flying Monster , The Island of Fire , The Kohen is Inexorable , The Kosekin , The New World , The Sacred Hunt , The Swamp Monster , The Torrent Sweeping Under the Mountains , The Wonders of the "Amir"