author
Henry Neville
1620–1694
Best remembered for the strange and influential tale The Isle of Pines, this 17th-century English writer mixed political experience with sharp satire. His work sits at the meeting point of early speculative fiction, travel fantasy, and Restoration-era debate.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1620, Henry Neville was an English politician, writer, and satirist from Berkshire. He studied at Oxford and later became involved in public life during the turbulent years of the English Civil War and Commonwealth.
Neville served on the Council of State in 1651 and took part in political affairs, including foreign policy, but he later fell into opposition to Oliver Cromwell. Alongside his political activity, he wrote pamphlets and prose shaped by the arguments and anxieties of his time.
He is now chiefly remembered for The Isle of Pines (1668), a widely noted tale of shipwreck, colonization, and imagined society that has often been linked to the early history of speculative and utopian fiction. He died in 1694.