Cobban, J MacLaren
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1849-1903) UK author, of some interest for Master of His Fate (October-December 1889 Blackwood's Magazine; 1890), whose protagonist, tortured by the need vampirically to drain the life energy of others to maintain his own Immortality, confesses all to an expert in the field of animal magnetism; and then – convulsively aged into an old man, as always happens before he feeds – kills himself. The Tyrants of Kool-Sim (1896) – a sequel to The White Kaid of the Atlas (1895), which is not fantastic – is a Lost-World tale featuring dwarfs with poisonous blood, the inevitable result of interbreeding between pygmies and ancient Hebrews, and brave British lads who prevail; An African Treasure [for subtitle see Checklist] (1899) features a Lost World in Morocco inhabited by lost Romans. Tinted Vapours: A Nemesis (1885) is sensational rather than fantastic; The Last Alive (1902), whose title is suggestive, is in fact about a tontine. [JC]
James MacLaren Cobban
born Aberdeen, Scotland: 24 April 1849
died London: 31 October 1903
works (selected)
- Master of His Fate (Edinburgh, Scotland: William Blackwood and Sons, 1890) [hb/]
- The King of Andaman: A Saviour of Society (London: Methuen and Co, 1895) [hb/]
- The Tyrants of Kool-Sim (London: H Henry, 1896) [illus/hb/J Brewster Fisher]
- An African Treasure: How the Doctor and Sandy Peebles Outwitted the Basha Misfiwa in his Search for the Meaning of the Strange Cryptogram, and How Jim Greathed, by the Aid of the Lovely Susannah, Dispelled the Mystery of "Bro'r Sol," together with their Adventures in the Interior of Morocco (London: John Long, 1899) [hb/]
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