Nebula to Man

Possibly the maddest book in my collection, this is a Darwinesque narrative poem describing the scientific progress on earth from it's creation through to early man. It takes 450 pages of rhyme and many Edwardian illustrators to get us to "Modern times". The chapters are all accurately and sequentially titled after the various eras: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretacious etc. I would have loved this as a child, and the highly literal and representational images of prehistoric life are very simular to those in Arthur Mee's Encyclopaedias, if any of you are old enough to remember those. They were part of my child-hood.




"But life on land persues a chequered course,
As Law holds on its way, without remorse."


I couldn't put it better myself.









Published by J.M. Dent in 1905 this is (understandably) a first edition and is disarmigly didactic and cheerfully inaccurate ; the dinosaurs would not pass muster today. It reminds me of the magnificent Victorian concrete dinosaurs at Crystal Palace Gardens, with horns-on-noses where there should be none, and the bi-ped dinosaurs slithering on all fours. Science (and what publishers are looking for) has moved on, not always to mankind's benefit, alas. I wonder how the twentieth century would be mapped out in narrative verse, as an appendix to this mighty volume?

The provenence is interesting too - it's from a library of a Spiritualist Society in Essex which housed Conan-Doyle's library. When my parents ran a second-hand book shop they were invited to clear out unwanted books. I went along to help and fell in love with this Nebula. It was a strange experience: obviously we felt scrutinised, being amongst mediums in a large Agatha Christie style mansion. In fact the Society was extremely pleasant and welcoming. Nevertheless, I half expected the ghost of Margaret Rutherford (who my grandmother once met in Kew Gardens; she was utterly enchanting by all accounts) to appear and admonish us for taking the books. As ABBA's Fernando played on their radio we discovered that anything they did not agree with had been "edited" with scissors... but the Nebula was intact. Many books had book-plates declaring them the personal property of Conan-Doyle, and Sherlock Holmes fans gave my parents a very good price for them.

Nebula to Man is probably a worthless book, having no apparent Conan-Doyle link. But to a once dinosaur-mad kid it was the most fascinating and bizarre book in the entire library. I love it. It's mad, it's ridiculous, the rhymes don't even scan. But I know it will never end up on an ereader!