The Isle of Pines: A Late Discovery of a Fourth Island near Terra Australis Incognita

The Isle of Pines is a book by Henry Neville published in 1668. An example of Utopian fiction, the book presents its story through an Epistolary frame: a "Letter to a friend in London, declaring the truth of his Voyage to the East Indies" written by a fictional Dutchman "Henry Cornelius Van Sloetten," concerning the discovery of an island in the southern hemisphere, populated with the descendants of a small group of castaways. The book also has political overtones. Neville was an anti-Stuart republican, and as a political exile he was clearly conscious of the socio-political concerns of the end of the early modern period. The island narrative is framed by the story of the Dutch explorers who are more organized and better equipped than the English voyage of three generations earlier, and who are needed to rescue a small English colonial nation-state from chaos. It is interesting to note that the book was written at the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Henry Neville (1620-1694) was an English author and satirist, best remembered for his tale of shipwreck and dystopia, The Isle of Pines.