The Lord of the Sea (Dodo Press) [Abridged] [Paperback]

M. P. Shiel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 8, 2008

Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865-1947), was a prolific British writer of fantastic fiction, remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances, published as novels, short stories and as serials. He wrote under the pen name Gordon Holmes. After working as a teacher and translator he broke into the fiction market with a series of short stories published in The Strand and other magazines. His early literary reputation was based on two collections of short stories influenced by Poe published in the Keynote series by John Lane, Prince Zaleski (1895) and Shapes in the Fire (1896), considered by some critics as the most flamboyant of the English decadent movement. His first novel was The Rajah's Sapphire (1896), based on a plot by William Thomas Stead, who probably hired Shiel to write the novel. Shiel's lasting literary reputation is largely based on Notebook III of the series which was serialized in The Royal Magazine in abridged form before book publication that autumn as The Purple Cloud (1901). He also wrote The Lord of the Sea (1901).

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Dodo Press; abridged edition edition (February 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1406569917
• ISBN-13: 978-1406569919
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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4 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars just a curiosity about it (disregard the stars system), December 15, 2003

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Roberto de Sousa Causo (Sao Paulo, SP Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lord of the Sea (Paperback)

This novel is mentioned in Dashiell Hammett's story "The Gutting of Couffignal," in Hammett's postumous collection _The Big Knockover_ (1962). The master of detective fiction has one anonymous detective of the Continental Op. Agency reading the book for a long of night of guarding wedding presents in the island of Couffignal. "The book was called _The Lord of the Sea_," Hammett wrote, "and had to do with a stong, tough and violent fellow named Hogarth, whose modest plan was to hold the world in one hand. There were plots and counterplots, kidnapings, murders, prisonbreakings, forgeries and burglaries, diamonds large as hats and floating forts larger than Couffignal. It sounds dizzy here, but in the book it was as real as a dime." To call this scientific romance "as real as a dime" sounds flattering enough for me.