Review by David Hugh   —   April 1, 2002

'Peter Wilkins' was first published two hundred and fifty years ago. The author, Robert Paltock, is something of a mystery. We know that he was born in 1697,and that his father died when he was four and his mother when he was fourteen. He was an attorney, living at Clement's Inn in London. Although the introduction to the 1913 edition draws a charming picture of him as a scholarly recluse, he was in fact married and had four children. He died and was buried at Rime Intrinseca in Dorset in 1767 aged 70 - a good age for the time. He wrote only one book, "The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins", published in 1750, when he was 53. He was apparently unknown in literary circles, and perhaps, in consequence, only one review of his book was published. The reviewer was rather at a loss - he described it as a cross between Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, and did not like it. It seems, however, that without the benefit of the literary establishment, it was kept in print throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by reprints at about thirty year intervals, and was even translated into French and German. Walter Scott, Coleridge, Southey and Leigh Hunt all read and enjoyed it as children. My copy was printed by J.M. Dent as an "Everyman" edition in 1913. Dent reprinted it in 1929 with coloured illustrations and supercilious comments by Edward Bawden. This edition was reprinted, with the illustrations in monochrome, in 1974 by Hyperion Press in Westport Connecticut. Copies are` currently available through both Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

I have gone into so much detail, because, if I did not actually own a 1913 copy, I might suspect that this book was an elaborate fake. The author's attitudes are very far from what we tend to assume to be those of the eighteenth century.

The story of Peter Wilkins is, by the contemporary literary device, supposed to have been told by him to Robert Paltock after Wilkins had been rescued at sea, and before he conveniently died.

The story begins with Wilkins' childhood. His father, he informs us, had been executed for treason in Monmouth's rebellion against James II (these things happen, you know) but had, as a routine precaution, put all his goods into his wife's name. When Peter was about 14 a designing local squire insinuated himself into Wilkins's mother's affections, and had him sent off to a boarding school.

Peter took advantage of his schooling to seduce and then marry his tutor's servant, Patty. He returns home to find that his mother has died, and the wicked squire has taken over his inheritance. Peter walks to Bristol, and finds a job as Captain's clerk on a trading ship. After various adventures, reminiscent of Patrick O'Brian except that he loses the battles, he ends up working as a slave labourer for the Portuguese somewhere in Angola. Eventually, he manages to escape with, or more accurately under the leadership of, a fellow prisoner. Glanlepze is brave, resourceful, imaginative and black, and is really the hero of their travels through Africa, cheering Peter up, finding ways to get the non-swimmer Peter across a wide river, overcoming a crocodile by tying its legs behind its back and so on. Eventually they find their way back to Glanleptze's faithful and devoted wife (Peter tactfully makes himself scarce for an hour) and his children.

Trying to get home, Peter manages to steal a ship together with other English waifs and strays, but unfortunately, none of them can navigate it, and they eventually get lost. The ship is attracted by a massive loadstone, and Peter's last companion is swept overboard. Eventually, he begins to explore in a ship's boat, and is swept by a current into a vast underground cavern. He sets up house on a small island in Robinson Crusoe style, investigating and adapting the local flora and fauna. Unlike Crusoe, he cannot get back to his ship for useful items. He keeps hearing voices, which he stoutly dismisses as those of birds, until one day he finds a beautiful girl unconscious outside his hut.

He manages to revive her, and discovers that she can fly. Wilkins is understandably vague about the mechanics. The ‘graundee' seems to be essentially bat-like, folding down into a silky covering on the ground. He learns her language, and, having learned, in a convenient dream, that Patty is dead, he marries her. (His examination of the problems of making love inside the graundee raised some eyebrows in Victorian times.) She has very sensitive eyes, and it is only after he makes dark glasses for her that she can stand full daylight. He finds that she worships a single god, Collwar, and accepts that this is a perfectly good name for Jehovah. He doesn't approve of worshipping the image of Collwar, and eventually convinces her that idols aren't gods, and that she doesn't need to pay priests to pray for her. The spirited argument they have on this topic owes something to the Protestant dislike of saint's images, and he has some difficulty in convincing her. They have several children, some with wings and sensitive eyes, some without and one in-between. (Mendel was 150 years later.) After hearing about all the good things in his ship, she one day flies to it, and comes back the following day with a load of useful goods. He worries that she could have overloaded herself – he mentions how hard she has to work to take off anyway. On her next trip, she works out how to fill boxes with goods, waterproof them and send them down the cascades to their island.

After several years, Youwarkee decides that she should pay a visit to her family. This leads Peter to receive a deputation from her family, whom he impresses with his guns, fires and general technology. This is followed by a visit from the provincial governor. Eventually Peter is carried on a chair by a dozen flyers to the king's court. There he uncovers a conspiracy against the king, by his favourite and his wife. Peter is given power and authority. He helps the king defeat an attempt by a rebellious governor, backed by unscrupulous priests, to overthrow the kingdom, using improvised anti-aircraft cannon to disrupt the enemy's massed formation of flyers. (Having organised the airlifting of his cannon, he reflects that "truly, had my countrymen the graundee to convey their cannon at so easy an expense from place to place, the whole world would not stand before us.")

As his reward for saving the kingdom, he persuades the king and his council to abolish slavery, of which he has a deep-seated hatred. He devises a scheme to compensate the nobles for losing their slaves, and recovers the previously lost provinces, where his first act is to abolish slavery. As a spot of light relief, he organises an air race, which is won by a young female, to his and his wife's delight. He goes on to investigate a nearby volcano, where he finds iron mines worked by prisoners, whom he liberates. He goes on to develop colonies to develop silver and copper mines and defend the boundaries of the kingdom, recruiting liberated slaves and their families to inhabit them. He introduces reading.

His final major activity is to explore a neighbouring region and to arrange a dynastic marriage, aided by convenient prophecies, between the king and the beautiful daughter of a neighbour. By this time he is getting elderly, and, his wife having died, he decides to try to find his way back to the known world. He arranges to be carried by relays of flying bearers. On sighting them, a ship fires a canon, which frightens his bearers into dropping him into the sea –which is where we came in.

Professor Shade wisely advises any potential contributors to re-read the book they are recommending. I had not realised, until I re-read Peter Wilkins, how different ‘pre-imperial' attitudes were from Victorian or even contemporary attitudes. Although he has some fun introducing the ‘Indians' to things they did not know he never suggests they are stupid. Rather than assuming the lead in their escape, he is led and encouraged by his black companion, Glanleptze, whom he later refers to as a model for wise behaviour. His wife, Youwarkee (Youwee, for short) is brave, loyal and ingenious. Women play a full and active part in the plot. The air race seems to have been invented specifically to emphasise the courage and determination of the ‘Indian' girl. Overall, however, the most striking aspect is Wilkins's (and by implication Paltock's) deep and fervent aversion to slavery. He takes every opportunity to free slaves, to abolish the institution, and to adjust society to function without it.