Extinct Monsters. A Popular Account of Some of the Larger Forms of Ancient Animal Life

FIRST US EDITION, xx-254pp., 25 plates illustrated by J. Smit and others, tissue guards, a little foxing to preliminaries, pencil gift inscription to front flyleaf dated 1893, modern ownership stamp to half title, publishers dark green cloth, triceratops blocked in gilt to front board, slime lettered in gilt, short closed tear to spine head, 8vo, New York, C. Appleton & Company, [1892]

The first American edition of the third book by English clergyman and leading popular writer on palaeontology, Henry Neville Huchinson (1856-1927).

From the 1890s to the 1920s Hutchinson shaped public conceptions of the prehistoric world – and dinosaurs – for several critical decades. His unparalleled success in this field is for two reasons.

The first, Hutchinson’s imaginative form of storytelling. He believed that the specialised technical language of contemporary science writing alienated the general public. He hoped to popularise scientific information and encourage wider participation through books intended to be as readable as novels. In Extinct Monsters he emphasised the fantastical dimension of the natural world by repeatedly comparing dinosaurs to the dragons of ancient mythology.

Hutchinson is rarely credited as the individual who revitalised public interest in geology, by promoting the visual side. The influential illustrations by Joseph Smit were the first meticulous attempts to illustrate many of the new American dinosaurs discovered by Marsh and Cope as they might have appeared in life. Including dinosaurs that are instantly recognisable today, like Stegosaurus and Triceratops, Smit’s illustrations formed the basis of many later representations of dinosaurs.

While Hutchinson was a fellow of various prestigious societies, including the Geological Society, he had little to no primary research to his name and held no institutional scientific positions.

This printing is scarce, with OCLC only citing copies in four US institutions and non in UK institutions.

Within a year, a third US printing was on the market.

[Nissen ZBI, 2062. Victoria Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature of New Audiences, Lightman 2009; Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature, Fallon, 2021]