Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set mostly in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. In Mary of Marion Isle we make the acquaintance of Andrew West, a young doctor who enters into a loveless marriage with Clara, his first cousin. With Clara pushing him unwillingly into politics, he eventually becomes appointed the governor-general of the U.K. colony of Oceania. When the ship that Andrew and Clara are on strikes an iceberg in the south Indian Ocean, Andrew fetches up on the desolate Marion Island. It is there that Andrew finds the true love of his life, Mary, who had been shipwrecked on the island some 15 years before and who had been living