The Island of Dr. Moreau

A visionary, shocking depiction of man's relationship to beast, first published in 1896 by the author of The War of the Worlds. With a new introduction by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Alone and adrift in the Pacific, Edward Prendick is rescued by a ship carrying an odd cargo of wild animals to an uncharted island. Though he is grateful for the hositality of the animals' keeper, Montgomery, and of Montgomery's employer, Dr. Moreau, he begins to be alarmed by the strangeness of the island--inhuman screams that keep him up at night, and bizarre beasts that roam the land. As Prendick digs deeper into the workings of the island, he finds that Dr. Moreau is more sinister than he seems: his torturous experiments in vivisection have thrown him from polite society, and he has developed these experiments on the island to truly horrifying results. As Dr. Moreau's tight control over his domain breaks down, his Beast Folk begin to show themselves in shocking ways.H. G. WELLS (1866-1946) was a prolific English writer in many genres, prominent in his time as a socialist and a pacifist as well as a pioneer of science fiction, author of The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Dr. Moreau, among other novels.