Title: The Mummy! (A Victorian Tale of the 22nd Century)
Originally published: 1827
Dates read: 3/1/18-3/30/18
Back to the Classics category: 19th Century Classic
Find out more about the Back to the Classics 2018 reading challenge HERE.
Read my other book reviews from the challenge HERE.
Author: Jane Webb Loudon
Jane Webb Loudon was born in 1807 and died penniless in 1858, at 51 years old. Her mother died when she was 12 and she traveled with her father learning languages. He father died when she was 17 and, left an orphan, she began writing to support herself.
Her first major work, The Mummy!, was published anonymously when she was 20. It was published less than a decade after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and is noted as the fist novel to feature a living mummy. The mention of a "steam mowing apparatus," "steam digging machine," and the use of electricity to draw rain from clouds to water crops, caught the attention of the horticulturist John Loudon. After seven months, they were married.
She knew very little of gardening, but she learned quickly from her husband. Most garden books of the day were very scientific and technical, and Loudon decided she was going to publish an everyday botanist book for women. She wrote and illustrated (she was a self-taught artist) multiple horticultural books that made gardening accessible to the general public. Her husband's work drove them to poverty and he died in 1843. She struggled to provide for herself and her daughter until Jane Webb Loudon passed in 1858. (source1, source2)
Plot summary:
The Egyptian mummy of King Cheops is brought back to life through scientific means in 2137. He takes over a hot air balloon and crash-lands in London. England's Queen dies in the crash and a new Queen is voted into service, but how long will she last? Cheops, though terrifying to those who behold him, offers advice to those who are willing to listen to him... and threatens destruction on those who do not heed his words.
Favorite quotes:
"If you once allow innovation to be dangerous, you instantly put a stop to all improvement - you absolutely shut and bolt the doors against it. Oh! It is horrible that such a doctrine should be broached in a civilized country."
"Nothing makes one so much disposed to be in a good humor with the world, as being in good humor with oneself."
"Ridicule is by no means the test of truth. Fools often - nay, generally, laugh at what they cannot understand."
"Instead of losing time in regretting past errors, it is the part of a wise man to endeavor to find means of remedying them and avoiding them in future."
Review:
This book drew me in right away with all the futuristic inventions. There were many steam-powered items, such as a plow. One of the main forms of travel was by hot air balloon, but you could also fill your horse with a type of gas to make it float and travel that way. There was also a really interesting form of long-distance communication. Quick history lesson:
1990s - instant messaging and texting
1970s - email
mid 1800s - telephone
1830s/1840s - telegraph and Morse code
1827 - Jane Webb Loudon published in her fictional book, The Mummy!, how letters were sent by shooting hallowed canon balls to strategically located mail centers.
And, of course, the mummy was brought back to life. What's interesting is, once the mummy is reanimated, much of those science fiction inventions disappear for the sake of focussing on the story. It seems to me like they were meant to draw the reader in, but the focus was on the characters and plot - not the inventions. Which, for as much as I enjoy reading about futurist/science fiction inventions, a story is really bland if all it focuses on are the inventions. (She does pull the science fiction aspect back in at the end, though, with automaton surgeons and judges.)
Most of the book actually follows 2 separate story lines and, within those storylines, you get multiple people's perspective. Characters were quite manipulative and people were often not what they appeared to be. I went through the story changing who I supported and wanted to "win" depending on the information that was available to me at the time. It was a complicated story with many characters and a number of plot twists. Some of the twists I predicted... others were a complete surprise. I enjoyed the book because it always kept me second guessing my predictions.
One of the only things that I didn't really like was how often people fainted. It didn't take much for someone to get worked up about something and pass out (men fainted just about as much as women). Another thing that bothered me was that, when the mummy first came back to life, it was expressed to the reader that he only spoke Egyptian and didn't understand English... but then all of a sudden he spoke perfect English and was conversing with those around him. Maybe I missed something, but the language learning was never explained.
Overall, it was a good book. It had its serious moments and its funny moments. It had its slow spots, but, for the most part, it kept me wanting to know what happens next. (Side note: I haven't read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, so I can't compare the 2 books.)
Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Jane Wedd Loudon have the last words:
"It is not in the nature of the human mind, to be contented: we must always either hope or fear; and things at a distance appear so much more beautiful than they do when we approach them, that we always fancy what we have not, infinitely more superior to any thing we have; and neglect enjoyment within our reach, to pursue others, which elude our grasp at the very moment when we hope we have attained them."
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