James De Mille 
A Strange Manuscript Found In A Copper Cylinder 

The most read James De Mille book is A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. It was serialized anonymously and posthumously in Harper's Weekly, and Harper and Brothers of New York City released it as a book in 1888. Following that, it was serialized in the UK and Australia and published as a book in the UK and Canada. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, later versions were printed using the plates of the first Harper & Brothers edition. The satirical and fantastical romance is based on an imagined semi-tropical continent in Antarctica that is home to prehistoric monsters and a group of people who worship death known as the Kosekin. It predates the exotic setting and fantasy-adventure elements of works of the "Lost World genre, " such as Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot, as well as countless prehistoric world movies loosely based on these and other works, and was written many years before it was published. It is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Edgar Allan Poe's Ms. Found in a Bottle served as both the source for the title and the setting.