Sladen, Douglas
Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1856-1947) UK academic, poet, editor and author, in Australia 1879-1884, in UK subsequently. Much of his academic and creative life reflected his years in Australia; his anthologies of Australian poetry were influential, and his long advocacy of the poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870) generated studies, editions, and his only sustained sf novel, Fair Inez: A Romance of Australia (1918), set in the Utopian Australia of 2000-2007 CE, and featuring the adventures of a descendant of the poet. Some of Sladen's earlier works are of some interest: The Tragedy of the Pyramids: A Romance of Army Life in Egypt (1909) is set in the Near Future, though without much consequence; and The Shadow of a Great Light: The Romance of Tancred Guiscard (1917) attempts to demonstrate the reality of a sort of limbo accessible, by the novelist Guiscard through unknown means, perhaps (he thinks) Telepathy. Sladen's last work of any interest, The Crystal and the Sphere: A Romance of Crystal-Gazing in Egypt (1925), traces the Discovery of an atomic Power Source dating back to Ancient Egypt. [JC]
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
born London: 5 February 1856
died Hove, Sussex: 12 February 1947
works
- The Tragedy of the Pyramids: A Romance of Army Life in Egypt (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1909) [hb/]
- The Shadow of a Great Light: The Romance of Tancred Guiscard (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1917) [hb/]
- Fair Inez: A Romance of Australia (London: Hutchinson and Company, 1918) [hb/nonpictorial]
- The Crystal and the Sphere: A Romance of Crystal-Gazing in Egypt (London: Stanley Paul and Company, 1925) [hb/J Abbey]
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