The Land That Time Forgot was serialized in The Blue Book Magazine in August 1918, then published as part of a trilogy (with The People That Time Forgot and Out of Time’s Abyss) by A.C. McClurg & Co. in 1924. The novel is narrated by Bowen Tyler, an American whose ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1916. After a series of complications involving capture, recapture, and uneasy alliance with the German crew, the submarine arrives at Caprona — a lost continent surrounded by impassable cliffs, hidden near Antarctica.
Caprona’s conceit is Burroughs’s most original: the island is arranged in evolutionary zones. Near the shore, life is primitive — single-celled organisms, amphibians, early reptiles. As one travels inland, the life forms become progressively more evolved: dinosaurs, mammals, primitive humans, and eventually advanced human civilizations. Individual organisms also progress through these stages during their lifetimes, beginning as primitive forms near the coast and migrating inland as they evolve. It is evolution compressed into geography and individual lifespan simultaneously.
This premise allows Burroughs to pack an extraordinary variety of adventure into a single setting: submarine warfare, dinosaur encounters, prehistoric survival, tribal conflict, and romantic rescue all occur within the same narrative. The World War I frame — the uneasy cooperation between American and German crews — adds a political dimension unusual in Burroughs’s work.
Collecting The Land That Time Forgot
First edition (A.C. McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1924): Contains all three Caspak novellas. Red cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $600–$1,500
- Very good/very good: $250–$600
- Good: $100–$250