102 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
could find, Harper. It was his first roll of the dice, but it immediately paid off.
His manuscript, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, was immediately accepted and
released in 1882.
Before the turn of the 20th century, it went through more than 23 printings,
selling in excess of 20,000 copies, a best seller even by today’s standards. The book
has been in publication ever since and translated into at least a dozen languages.
It won international renown for Donnelly, even a personal letter from the British
Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who was so enthusiastic about prospects for
discovering Atlantis, he proposed a government-sponsored expedition in search
of the lost civilization.
Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel, was the author’s sequel, but by the
time of its release in 1883, his critics in the scientific community began marshal-
ling bitter criticism against Donnelly, a non-degreed intruder into their academic
feifdoms. They intimidated him with their high-handed skepticism, and he pub-
lished no more books about Atlantis. He wrote social novels, and returned to
politics as a populist leader. Ignatius Donnelly died at the home of a friend, just
as the bells of New Years Day, 1901, the first moment of a new century, were
chiming in Saint Paul.
(seeAtlantis: The Antediluvian World)Dooy
The light-skinned, red-haired forefather of the Nages, a New Guinean tribe
residing in the highlands of Flores. He was the only man to survive the Great
Flood that drowned his distant kingdom. Arriving in a large boat, he had many
wives among the native women. They presented him with a large number of
children, who became the Nages. When he died peacefully in extreme old age,
Dooy’s body was laid to rest under a stone platform at the center of a public
square in the tribal capital of Boa Wai. His grave is the focal point of an annual
harvest festival still celebrated by the Nages. During the ceremonies, a tribal
chief wears headgear fashioned to resemble a golden, seven-masted ship, a model
of the same vessel in which Dooy escaped the inundation of his Pacific island
kingdom.
(See Mu)Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
Famed British author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries wrote about Atlantis
inThe Maracot Deep for a 1928 serialization by The Saturday Evening Post,
subsequently published in book form.