Archimago

[1864] [Carr, Francis] (1834-94). Archimago. London: Ward & Lock/Newcastle-on-Tyne: D.H. Wilson. 115 pp. O copy has pencilled in “: or, The New Zealander on the Ruins of London” which appears on the cover. There is also a second title page with a deliberately faint Auckland, New Zealand, 1964. The English Catalogue gives the subtitle as above and the publisher as London: Saunders & Otley, 1864. ATL, O, VUW

Satire. Britain destroyed. The narrator is a member of a New Zealand tribe the Smeythies from around Taranaki. The novel begins with the narrator sitting on London Bridge surveying the ruins of London, the same image as the famous “Macauley’s New Zealander” of 1840; see David Skilton, “Contemplating the Ruins of London: Macaulay’s New Zealander and Others.” Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London 2.1 (March 2004). http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journa/march2004/skilton.html. The Thames has recovered from its past pollution, but the city is rubble, as is Europe “from the Caspian Sea to the Galway Coast,” mentioning that both St. Paul’s in London and St. Peter’s in Rome are ruins. But the novel goes on to satirize life in London as if little had happened, and much of the book is based upon communication with the spirit world.