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 loud to one another, and the incredible story unfolds—his journey through a subterranean tunnel to a lost world that 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 the science fiction genre, this story is bound to enthrall readers today and revive James De Mille’s reputation as a writer ahead of his time.James De Mille (1833–1880) was a Canadian academic and rhetorician who published many works of Victorian popular fiction. His best-known work,A Strange Manuscript found in a Copper Cylinder, was serialized posthumously inHarper’s Weeklyin 1888.