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Janvier, Thomas A

(1849-1913) US journalist and author, whose Lost Worlds novel, The Aztec Treasure House: A Romance of Contemporaneous Antiquity (1890), didactically describes a surviving remnant of the Aztec empire. In The Women's Conquest of New York [for subtitle see Checklist] (dated 1953 but 1894 chap) as by A Member of the Committee of Safety of 1908, Tammany Hall misguidedly enfranchises females, who run amok in New York until physically restrained (the mayoress is in fact beaten) by their aroused spouses (see Feminism; Women in SF). In the Sargasso Sea (1898) is a Robinsonade in which a shipwrecked sailor survives aboard his disabled vessel in a maze of seaweed, finds a treasure trove, and escapes; this novel offers one of the first representations of the Sargasso Sea as a vast legend-dense dangerous shipwreck-littered Island inhabited by Lost Races and pirates and Monsters and the like. In Great Waters: Four Stories (coll 1901) contains fantasies; several of the tales assembled in Legends of the City of Mexico (coll 1910) are likewise fantasy though cursorily disguised as nonfiction; the Tall Tales assembled in Santa Fé's Partner: Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town (coll of linked stories 1907) tend to shy short of the fantastic [for Tall Tales see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below]. [JC]

see also: Anthropology.

Thomas Allibone Janvier

born Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 16 July 1849

died New York: 18 June 1913

works

• The Aztec Treasure House: A Romance of Contemporaneous Antiquity (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1890) as by A Member of the Committee of Safety of 1908 [the book is dated 1953: illus/Frederic Remington: hb/]
  • The Aztec Treasure-House: A Lost Race Novel (Rockville, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2012) as Thomas Allibone Janvier [vt of the above: note changed byline: pb/]
• The Women's Conquest of New York: Being an Account of the Rise and Progress of the Women's Rights Movement; of the Grant of Female Suffrage; of the Formation of the Area League; of the Capture by Women Voters of the Government of the City of New York by the Election as Mayoress of Bridget O'Dowd; and of the Session of Female Despotism Which Thereafter Ensued, and Which Was Ended by an Appeal to Primitive Natural Law (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1894) as by A Member of the Committee of Safety of 1908 [chap: book is dated 1953, after its supposed events: hb/]
• In the Sargasso Sea (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1898) [hb/]

collections

• In Great Waters: Four Stories (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1901) [coll: hb/]
• Santa Fé's Partner: Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907) [coll of linked stories: illus/Arthurs: h/Bertha Stuart]
• Legends of the City of Mexico (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910) [coll: illus/hb/Walter Appleton Clark]

links

• Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Project Gutenberg
• The Encyclopedia of Fantasy: Tall Tales
• Picture Gallery

Entry from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2011-current) edited by John Clute and David Langford.
Accessed 17:03 pm on 27 July 2026.
<https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/janvier_thomas_a>