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The English republican politician Henry Neville (1620–94) published a short work of prose fiction entitled The Isle of Pines in 1668, which opens with the discovery by a Dutch ship of an English-speaking community on an island near Madagascar.

Readers differ sharply as to whether The Isle of Pines describes a utopian or dystopian society. It has been described variously as a political satire, a work of pornography, and a forerunner of fictionalised accounts of travel such as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels.

The Isle of Pines was speedily translated into French and Dutch, and we exhibit a unique copy of a French translation produced by the Amsterdam publisher Marcus Doornik (1633–1703) at an unknown date in the late 1660s or early 1670s.

Citation:
Description de l’Isle de Pines. Ou nouvelle découverte d’une quatriéme Isle dans les Terres Meridionales inconnuës (Amsterdam, c.1668).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits,
accessed December 6, 2025,
https://www.marshlibrary.ie/digi/items/show/470