Newell, C M
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1823-1909) US doctor, sailor and author, who began publishing non-fantastic sea-stories as by Captain Robert Barnacle, though Leaves from an Old Log: Pehe Nu-e, or The Tiger Whale of the Pacific (1877) is of some interest for its reworkings of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851); several works under his own name were set in or around the Hawaii Archipelago, including Kalani of Oahu: An Historical Romance of Hawaii (1881), a Fantasy whose eponymous Hero betrays the goddess Pele; she takes revenge in various ways, while either causing or riding the waves of geological disturbances – earthquakes and volcanoes – inherent to the region. Of sf interest are two tales from the Fleetwing Series of Children's SF adventures: The Isle of Palms: Adventures While Wrecking for Gold, Encounter With a Mad Whale, Battle With a Devil-Fish, and Capture of a Mermaid (1888), which touches on Lost World territory, and whose picaresque elements are conveyed by its subtitle; and The Wreck of the Greyhound; Or, the Romantic Love of an Earl's Daughter (1889), in which the Invention of a submersible surf-board comes in time to save the cast. [JC]
Charles Martin Newell
born Concord, Massachusetts: 21 November 1823
died Watertown, Massachusetts: 24 May 1909
works
- Leaves from an Old Log: Pehe Nu-e, or The Tiger Whale of the Pacific (Boston, Massachusetts: D Lothrop and Company, 1877) [hb/]
- Kalani of Oahu: An Historical Romance of Hawaii (Boston, Massachusetts: printed for the author, 1881) [hb/]
- The Isle of Palms: Adventures While Wrecking for Gold, Encounter with a Mad Whale, Battle with a Devil-Fish, and Capture of a Mermaid (Boston, Massachusetts: De Wolfe, Fisk and Co, 1888) [hb/]
- The Wreck of the Greyhound; Or, the Romantic Love of an Earl's Daughter (Boston, Massachusetts: De Wolfe, Fisk and Co, 1889) [hb/]
links
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