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The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins
• Now with an Historical Afterword by Ron Miller
• Includes the original illustrations
Featured in Ron Miller’s “The Conquest of Space Book Series.” Richard Paltock's 1751 masterpiece about an underground race of winged, flying humans---including the beautiful, courageous Youwarkee---has been compared to Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels as one of the great fantasy adventurers of all time.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
• Includes the original illustrations
Featured in Ron Miller’s “The Conquest of Space Book Series.” Richard Paltock's 1751 masterpiece about an underground race of winged, flying humans---including the beautiful, courageous Youwarkee---has been compared to Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels as one of the great fantasy adventurers of all time.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
382 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1751
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 23, 2008
If you read Robinson Crusoe and thought, "Man, this would be better with a naked woman who could fly" than Peter Wilkins is your man. Published mere decades after Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, the lone contemporary reviewer who tackled this work considered it a baffling combination of the two. Despite this lackluster public response, Robert Paltock's sole literary work has survived the centuries with reprintings every few decades or so, and nerds like me consider this a predecessor to what we call science fiction. Or speculative fiction, if you want to be especially geeky.
I don't know how I stumbled across this curiosity, but the LA Public Library has a couple copies, so I read it. Peter Wilkins is an adventurer's adventurer, and his tales are filled with journeys to distance lands, battles, slavery, seduction, shipwrecks, and yes, a mysterious race of flying naked people who live at the South Pole. He makes Robinson Crusoe and Lemuel Gulliver look like pansies.
Of course, this is early 18th century literature, so you're going to spend plenty of time on the minutae of how one excactly survives a shipwreck on the South Pole, grows crops, makes fabric and so forth. And if I remember right, you don't even get to the naked people until more than half-way through the book. Oddly enough, when you finally make it to the civilization of flying naked folk, the writing loses it's luster and becomes more of a travelogue.
Overall, if you're looking for something completely different try this out. It's not right for everybody, though, so don't come crying to me if you feel your time was wasted.
I don't know how I stumbled across this curiosity, but the LA Public Library has a couple copies, so I read it. Peter Wilkins is an adventurer's adventurer, and his tales are filled with journeys to distance lands, battles, slavery, seduction, shipwrecks, and yes, a mysterious race of flying naked people who live at the South Pole. He makes Robinson Crusoe and Lemuel Gulliver look like pansies.
Of course, this is early 18th century literature, so you're going to spend plenty of time on the minutae of how one excactly survives a shipwreck on the South Pole, grows crops, makes fabric and so forth. And if I remember right, you don't even get to the naked people until more than half-way through the book. Oddly enough, when you finally make it to the civilization of flying naked folk, the writing loses it's luster and becomes more of a travelogue.
Overall, if you're looking for something completely different try this out. It's not right for everybody, though, so don't come crying to me if you feel your time was wasted.
December 21, 2024
There were many spots when i considered 2-stars for this one, mostly due to length. Now it is a bit of Robinson Crusoe-type thing with Lost Civilization elements. I have read lot of these kind of books by now and do tend to like them more than the average reader, and yet it’s still a long.
You can divide the book into 3 parts really. The first third has all the biography seemingly required for this type of work. We cover it all from the his schooldays. Finally we get out and about and have numerous incidents, many of which would be quite exciting if they didn’t tend to be so perfunctory.
The second third is where we finally come to a halt and have the Robinson Crusoe-esque stuff. It gets more fun when things go weird but then also gets bogged down for a while until we really get into the Lost Civilization parts.
Now i was genuinely pleased that this was an earlier work and seemed not subject to the usual tropes. Because if this was a bit later, into the pulp era, there would undoubadly be some civilwar type situations, maybe a chosen one prophecy etc. i was really glad it was avoided those tropes.. and then it hit them all :lol.
At least most of this were also perfunctory and we managed to get through it rather quickly, although the rest of the tale didn’t get much better but at least we were through the tropes.
Anyway.. what is there to like here? Well the civilization you meet is at least interesting and a bit different. However the real gems are the social commentaries.
Yeah it gets a bit religious, but most of its religious elements are so general they barely feel like religion and there’s just a lot of little interesting thoughts and moments sprinkled about that kept it interesting.
The morality seen here is both less and more than i was expecting, its also feels pretty progressive in terms of race and gender to a degree aswell.
Was it worth the dig through for the tid-bits? For me yeah, for you maybe not.
Also i have no idea how those extra parts work even with the detailed descriptions and diagrams. Maybe some anatomist could study this and tell me if those things make sense :P .
You can divide the book into 3 parts really. The first third has all the biography seemingly required for this type of work. We cover it all from the his schooldays. Finally we get out and about and have numerous incidents, many of which would be quite exciting if they didn’t tend to be so perfunctory.
The second third is where we finally come to a halt and have the Robinson Crusoe-esque stuff. It gets more fun when things go weird but then also gets bogged down for a while until we really get into the Lost Civilization parts.
Now i was genuinely pleased that this was an earlier work and seemed not subject to the usual tropes. Because if this was a bit later, into the pulp era, there would undoubadly be some civilwar type situations, maybe a chosen one prophecy etc. i was really glad it was avoided those tropes.. and then it hit them all :lol.
At least most of this were also perfunctory and we managed to get through it rather quickly, although the rest of the tale didn’t get much better but at least we were through the tropes.
Anyway.. what is there to like here? Well the civilization you meet is at least interesting and a bit different. However the real gems are the social commentaries.
Yeah it gets a bit religious, but most of its religious elements are so general they barely feel like religion and there’s just a lot of little interesting thoughts and moments sprinkled about that kept it interesting.
The morality seen here is both less and more than i was expecting, its also feels pretty progressive in terms of race and gender to a degree aswell.
Was it worth the dig through for the tid-bits? For me yeah, for you maybe not.
Also i have no idea how those extra parts work even with the detailed descriptions and diagrams. Maybe some anatomist could study this and tell me if those things make sense :P .
July 20, 2020
Utterly brilliant!
A riveting story, well written, dated only by the somewhat archaic English language in use, however eminantly readable.
A dictionary to hand helps if you want wording exactitudes; everything you read you can easily intuit the meaning where old fashioned words lie, without ever actually needing to look up definitions unless you want to.
Only the end is sudden and frustrating to the modern reader.
One note, be warned: every chapter is headed not with chapter names, but chapter spoilers written in italics, as was the habit of the century it was written in.
Be warned! Learn not to read the ittallicised chapter headings or have some of your reading pleasure reduced by major spoilers!!
A fabulous fantasy adventure, well worth reading, age 6 to 106; such a great book!!! Enjoy!!!
A riveting story, well written, dated only by the somewhat archaic English language in use, however eminantly readable.
A dictionary to hand helps if you want wording exactitudes; everything you read you can easily intuit the meaning where old fashioned words lie, without ever actually needing to look up definitions unless you want to.
Only the end is sudden and frustrating to the modern reader.
One note, be warned: every chapter is headed not with chapter names, but chapter spoilers written in italics, as was the habit of the century it was written in.
Be warned! Learn not to read the ittallicised chapter headings or have some of your reading pleasure reduced by major spoilers!!
A fabulous fantasy adventure, well worth reading, age 6 to 106; such a great book!!! Enjoy!!!
February 23, 2018
Truly fascinating. It would be a delight to read it as part of a series of early utopian novels. I was grateful for the introduction and notes, but I'm still quite curious about Paltock's own history.
Want to read
December 31, 2024Robinsonade with a naked flying woman
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews