The Lost Continent

The novel uses the common nineteenth-century device of a "framing story" to set its narrative in context and augment its believability. The story proper was written supposedly by Deucalion, a warrior-priest of ancient Atlantis; the text having been partly destroyed inadvertently by one of its discoverers at the time of its finding, it is not entirely complete. Deucalion's account describes his heroic but ultimately doomed battle to save Atlantis from destruction by its avaricious and selfish empress, Phorenice.