The Lord of the Sea
"The Lord of the Sea (1901), almost as fine [as The Purple Cloud], is strongly based on Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It develops a network of mid-19th-century motifs – incredible coincidences, swapped babies, hidden identities, chance-found incredible wealth, documents in a trunk, festering revenges, elaborate prison escapes, frustrated romance, Napoleonic megalomania – yet, though written to an aesthetic outdated for its time, in embodies that aesthetic with enormous elan and vitality." – The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
M. P. Shiel
Matthew Phipps Shiel (1865–1947) was a prolific British writer of West Indian descent.
M. P. Shiel is remembered mostly for supernatural and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901) remains his most famous and often reprinted novel.