James De Mille (1833-80) was a Canadian academic who published many works of popular fiction. He is mostly known today for his posthumous novel A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder.

Four sailors discover a copper cylinder containing a manuscript written by the adventurer Adam More, who was shipwrecked in the southern hemisphere. They read its contents out to one another, and the incredible story unfolds of his journey to a lost world which survives at the foot of a volcano. This strange utopian society, in which humans coexist with prehistoric animals, is the antithesis of Victorian England, as poverty is preferred to wealth and darkness to light.

At once a timeless satire and a pioneering work of science fiction, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder will enthral readers of today and revive James De Mille's reputation as a writer ahead of his time.

A rip-roaring adventure. and an almost Swiftian satire on human piety and vanity.