Scholarly Editions: H.G. Wells' The Island
of Doctor Moreau - Annotated with an Introduction
This annotated
edition of H. G. Wells' second novel, The Island of Doctor
Moreau, is meant to encourage the pursuits of scholars who
are either encountering Wells' influential classic for the first
time or are returning to it in order to delve more deeply into
its antecedents and influences. In the novel, Prendick, an aimless
gentleman naturalist, becomes shipwrecked on the island where
Moreau is creating bestial humans by a cruel and scientifically
questionable application of vivisection and transfusions. Like
Prendick, we ask, "What could it all mean? A locked enclosure
on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled
and distorted men?" but the answer is as baffling and ambiguous
as the beast folk that Moreau creates.
The novel
was seen as ghastly and indecent when it was published, but even
in these times of internet schadenfreude, Moreau is still
viewed as a shockingly vivid classic which probes the unsettling
questions of human experimentation, gender and medicine, colonization,
and the porous line that separates us from non-human animals.
My reading
presents the novel through the lens of its critical background,
as well as the scholarly work on its various themes of cruelty
and exploitation. In order to trace the antecedents of the text,
I include an introduction to Herbert George Wells and his work,
the novel's critical background, and a discussion of the filmic
attempts to bring his compelling and by times disturbing work
to the big screen. The annotations of the novel are meant to explain
those more cryptic or dated references in the work as well as
allow the reader to trace the critical readings the text offers.
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