ith the caterpillar. Like the wily
creature smoking a hookah, Paddy smokes a pipe and shouts "Hurroo!" as
the children teach him to write his name in the sand. The children
lose "all count of time," just as the Mad Hatter does. Whereas Alice
grows nine feet taller, Dick sprouts "two inches taller" and Emmeline
"twice as plump." Like the baby in the "Pig and Pepper," Hannah sneezes
at the first sight of Dicky. The novel is artfully littered with
references to wonder, curiosity, and strangeness--all evidence of
Stacpoole's conscious effort to invoke and honor his Victorian
predecessor.

Stacpoole presented The Blue Lagoon to Publisher T. Fisher Unwin in
September 1907 and went to Cumberland to assist another ailing doctor
in his practice. Every day from Eden Vue in Langwathby, Stacpoole wrote
to his fiancee, Margaret Robson (or Maggie, as he called her), and
waited anxiously for their wedding day. On December 17, 1907, the
couple were married and spent their honeymoon at Stebbing Park, a
friend's country house in Essex, about three miles from the village of
Stebbing. It was there that they stumbled upon Rose Cottage, where
Stacpoole lived for several years before he moved to Cliff Dene on the
Isle of Wight in the 1920s.

Published in January 1908, The Blue Lagoon was an immediate success,
both with reviewers and the public. "[This] tale of the discovery of
love, and innocent mating, is as fresh as the ozone that made them
strong," declared one reviewer. Another claimed that "for once the
title of `romance,' found in so many modern stories, is really
justified." The novel was reprinted more than twenty times in the next
twelve years and remained popular in other forms for more than eighty
years. Norman MacOwen and Charlton Mann adapted the story as a play,
which ran for 263 performances in London from August 28, 1920, to April
16, 1921. Film versions of the novel were made in 1923, 1949, and 1980.

Stacpoole also wrote two successful sequels: The Garden of God (1923)
and The Gates of Morning (1925). These three books and two others were
combined to form The Blue Lagoon Omnibus in 1933. The Garden of God was
filmed as Return to the Blue Lagoon in 1992.

This Gutenberg etext of The Blue Lagoon: A Romance is based on the 1908
first American edition published by J. B. Lippincott Company of
Philadelphia.

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The Blue lagoon: A Romance

by H. de Vere Sta