The Lost World
by Arthur Conan Doyle 1859–1930
The book, and the century it came out of.
Professor Challenger announces that dinosaurs survive on a plateau in South America and dares the Royal Society to prove otherwise; a reporter, a sportsman and a rival scientist go with him to find out. Doyle wrote it the year after he tired of Holmes, and gave the world its first lost-world expedition — every jungle-plateau story since is descended from this one. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Gauguin, Rousseau and Inness among them.
I have wrought my simple planIf I give one hour of joyTo the boy who’s half a man,Or the man who’s half a boy.
The Lost World, by Arthur Conan Doyle, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Science Fiction
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 232 pages
- Reading time
- about 5 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501310209
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
1912, at the end of the blank spaces
The interior of South America was one of the last places on the map that could plausibly hide something. Percy Fawcett was surveying the Bolivian frontier in those years and knew Conan Doyle; the South American plateau in the book stands on ground that was still genuinely unmapped.
Dinosaur bones had been coming out of the American West for forty years and the great museum skeletons had just gone on display, so the creatures were newly familiar and still astonishing. Within a generation, aerial survey had closed the blank spaces for good.
This book in culture: 8 versions
Most people meet a book like this one on a screen first. Here is what was made of it — and none of these is the book.
The whole afterlife of The Lost World — screen, stage and beyond →
- 1925 The Lost World Harry O. Hoyt
- 1960 The Lost World Irwin Allen
- 1992 The Lost World Timothy Bond
- 1998 The Lost World Bob Keen
- 2001 The Lost World Stuart Orme TV film
- — The Lost World TV series
- — Lost World manga series
- — Challenger comic
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Lost World, first published 1912, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Science Fiction shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501310209, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Lost World?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Arthur Conan Doyle's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 232 pages, which is roughly about 5 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
