The Lost World: Collector's Centenary Edition

    About two months ago, I recieved my copy of John Lavas's Centenary Edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. I am not exagerating when I say that this is truly a magnificent volume. Lavas must have gone overboard in putting this project togather. I already owned the previous anniversary edition, which I thought was incredibale as well,  but this is even more extraordinary. As with the previous edition, Lavas  has lavishly illusrated this volume throughout, basing some of his his detailed pen-and-ink drawings on the famous paintings of paleo-artist Zdenek Burian (a few actual Burian drawings are included as well). However, though the drawings from previous edition are intact, they are all enlarged and in color, as the example below of Challenger being pursued by a Terror Bird.

     There are a number of totally new illustrations as well, and I am not going to post them all for fear of spoiling them for anyone interested in purchasing the book itself. However one new, or rather ubdated illustration is this detailed map of Maple White Land:

    The animals pictured on the map are located approximately where members of the Challenger expedition encountered them. Notice that there are at least two creatures not specically idntenified in the book. In the upper right-hand corner, there is a depiction of large, prehistoric amphibian, perhaps a mastodonsaurus or an eryops. In the upper-leftish portion of the map, central to jungle above the megaloceras and below the megalosaurs, is a large swine-like animal that appears to be an entelodont, perhaps dinohyus. A large hog (I believe) was mentioned in the book, but not specificlaly identified as an entelodont. On the northeast edge of the central lake is huge snake which might well be a titanoboa. Note also that the ichthyosaurs featured in Lavas's illustrations are the "sword-fish" ichthyosaur eurhinosaurus.It evolved paralell to actual swordfish, as did a dolphin during the age of mammals called eurhinodelphis.
    In addition to this, thius volume also contians detialed background on the contributers, Conan Doyle himself, inspirtions for The Lost World, and much else. There are stills from the 1925 production of The Lost World, which remains pretty much definitive to the present, and some stills from Journey To the Beginning of Time
a 50s prehistoric move which uniquely combined stop-motion puppetry and drawing animation for its effects. That film was influenced by the paintings of Burian, and also from the 1915 novel Plutonia, which was illustrated by Burian.

    The only drawback to this purchase is the absence of any of the original illustrations by Harry Roundtree for the serial, nor any of the later ones by Joseph Clement Coll. Possibly the reason for this is that some of those illustrations (some fo the Cole ones, in particular), is that, unlike Burian, they are less than scientifically accurate.
    In any event, you can see that I am well-pleased with theis purchase, which is one I would highly recomend. For some major-cool Burian illustrations, BTW, go here:

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