author
Charles Romyn Dake
1849–1899
Best remembered for A Strange Discovery, an imaginative sequel to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, he brought a physician’s curiosity to one of the stranger corners of early speculative fiction. His work helped give Poe’s haunting adventure an unexpected afterlife.
1 Audiobook
A Strange Discovery
by Charles Romyn Dake
About the author
Born in Pittsburgh in 1849, he was an American homeopathic physician, editor, and writer who is sometimes listed under the spelling Charles Romyn Dake. Alongside his medical career, he wrote fiction and became part of the small but interesting world of late 19th-century imaginative literature.
His best-known book, A Strange Discovery (1899), continues the story world of Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym by revisiting the mysterious figure Dirk Peters. That novel has kept his name alive for readers interested in early science fiction, lost-world adventures, and literary sequels to classic works.
He died in 1899 in Illinois, the same year his novel appeared. Though his body of fiction was small, it has continued to attract attention from readers and reference works because of its unusual link to Poe and its place in the early history of speculative fiction.