Mayo, W S
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1811-1895) US physician and author whose Kaloolah; Or, Journeyings to the Djébel Kumri: An Autobiography of Jonathan Romer (1849) [for vts see Checklist] may have taken its hoax-like, factoid-filled story – with Mayo himself posing as the editor of Romer's manuscript – from Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of A Gordon Pym, of Nantucket (1838), and its exotic Fantastic Voyage narrative from the early works of Herman Melville, whose Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale (1851 2vols) was in turn influenced by Mayo. Toward the end of the travels depicted in Kaloolah its protagonist finds himself in the land of Framazugda, a highly civilized Lost World with a sophisticated urban Utopia at its heart, sanitary, clement and organized. Unlike most nineteenth-century visitors to Lost Worlds, Romer never wishes to leave, and does not. [JC]
William Starbuck Mayo, M D
born Ogdensburg, New York: 15 April 1811
died New York: 22 November 1895
works
- Kaloolah; Or, Journeyings to the Djébel Kumri: An Autobiography of Jonathan Romer (New York: George P Putnam, 1849) [hb/]
- Kaloolah; Or, African Adventures (London: George Routledge and Company, 1857) [vt of the above: hb/]
- Kaloolah: Adventures of Jonathan Romer, of Nantucket (New York: G P Putnam's Sons, 1878) [vt of the above: hb/]
links
previous versions of this entry