Chapter 4 shows dinosaurs’ link to concerns about secularisation and specialisation contributed to Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous romance The Lost World. It argues that the text can be understood in relation to Conan Doyle’s romantic approach to scientific knowledge, especially his strident anti-materialism and aversion to technical jargon. Examining archival material from New York Public Library’s Berg Collection, including the original manuscript, Fallon weaves the content of The Lost World together in surprising ways with Conan Doyle’s palaeontological forays, cryptozoological sightings, and interest in psychical research, showing that noting the differences between the US and UK serialised and book versions provides a more precise understanding of Conan Doyle’s intended romantic effects. In particular, Fallon emphasises the illustrations by Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, Patrick Forbes. Alongside the text, these subtle and meticulously planned images make clear the author’s desire to convince readers that the world is full of unexplained wonders. As such, the British book edition in which Forbes’s images appear was, for Conan Doyle, the correct way to experience The Lost World.

Chapter one provides a case study of Henry Neville Hutchinson, a frequently overlooked figure who was not only the most important early populariser of American dinosaurs but also a proponent of using imaginative literature to widen the mass public’s access to science. An unbeneficed British clergyman without a formal scientific position, Hutchinson aired his views both in popular journalism and in books on palaeontology like Extinct Monsters (1892). His writings often contradicted the views of palaeontological authorities. This chapter argues that palaeontologists who read Hutchinson’s democratising works with concern responded by fashioning clearer distinctions between true science and work that was popularisation or romance. In 1894 British palaeontologist Harry Seeley described Hutchinson’s writing as ‘literature rather than science’. As Fallon demonstrates, Seeley’s response also undermined Hutchinson’s popularisation of the previously obscure word ‘dinosaur’, which Seeley believed to be a misleading term wrongly emphasised by American researchers. Subsequently, Fallon shows how Hutchinson’s controversial attempt to publish a paper on the American dinosaur Diplodocus for the specialist Geological Magazine led him to criticise the secularity and complex style of conventional scientific articles. Hutchinson’s career exemplifies the concerns of this book.