James De Mille: The Complete Works

James De Mille (1833-1880) was a Canadian novelist and professor. Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, De Mille was the son of a merchant. As a young man, he traveled to Europe with his brother before returning to North America to pursue his Master of Arts degree at Brown University. Upon graduating in 1854, he married Anne Pryor and found employment at Acadia University as a Classics professor. In 1865, he was appointed professor of English and rhetoric at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Over the next fifteen years, he wrote over a dozen novels and short story collections, many of which were intended for a young adult audience. His most popular work, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888), was published posthumously as a serial in Harper’s Weekly, in which many of De Mille’s earlier works had appeared during his lifetime. Although his career was cut short by his death at the age of 46, De Mille is considered a pioneering practitioner of the Lost World genre of science fiction.