Lee, Thomas
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(circa 1830-circa 1904) UK author, active in the late nineteenth century, identified by Darko Suvin in Victorian Science Fiction in the UK (1983) as a North London plasterer and publican, though it seems it may be his son, Henry Lee, who was a plasterer. Lee's sf novel, Falsivir's Travels: The Remarkable Adventures of John Falsivir, Seaman, at the North Pole and in the Interior of the Earth, With a Description of their Wonderful People and the Things He Discovered There (1886), is a Hollow-Earth tale on Symmesian lines. The narrator discovers there a race of giants oppressed by a race of normal-sized humans, along with other features that E F Bleiler has suggested mark the author's attempts to satirize the UK of the nineteenth century; it is certainly the case that the author's sharply negative view of the role of Church and State in keeping the giants (ie the working class) obedient marks a bracing departure from more usual Victorian uses of the fantastic to – in the end – support the established world. [JC/MA]
Thomas Lee
born London: circa 1830
died Edmonton, London: circa 1904
works
- Falsivir's Travels: The Remarkable Adventures of John Falsivir, Seaman, at the North Pole and in the Interior of the Earth, With a Description of their Wonderful People and the Things He Discovered There (London: Published for the Proprietor, 1886) [hb/]
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