Popanilla

[1] It had been submitted to the publisher John Murray four years earlier entitled "The Adventures of Mr. Aylmer Papillion" but was rejected.

[2] As an allegorical novella describing a fantastic voyage, it was influenced by Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and probably by works of Samuel Johnson and Voltaire.

After a spell in seclusion reading the books, Popanilla returns to his community and tries to convince the king and the assembly that they should develop as an island.

After 3 days on the ocean, Popanilla comes to a civilised island (Vraibleusia) where he is shown round its capital (Hubbabub) by Skindeep.

He is invited to meet an ancient patched-up statue which can speak no wrong and is the ultimate power on the island, his decrees causing the stock market to ebb and flow.

Vast quantities of pink shells are issued to finance the fleet, leading to a massive stock boom which creates a nouveau riche strata sadly lacking in manners.

Then the inhabitants discovered delicious pine-apples from a foreign country which over time came under the control of the "Prince of the World" who knew nothing of the market gardener.

After various witnesses are unconvincing in their defence of Popanilla, by virtue of the intervention of a "remarkably able young man", the judge instructs the jury to acquit him which they do.

[4] The initials "SDK" which appear on the luggage Popanilla finds washed up on the shores of Fantaisie stand for "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge".

[9] Disraeli's biographer Robert Blake wrote that Popanilla “takes off the more absurd extravagances of the Benthamites…It also laughs at the Corn Laws and the colonial system.” [10] Disraeli, who would go on to be Prime Minister of Great Britain when its empire approached its height, satirises the colonial system[11] when Popanilla asks Skindeep about the governance of an uninhabited territory: 'Upon what system,' one day enquired [Popanilla] of his friend Skindeep, 'does your Government surround a small rock in the middle of the sea with fortifications, and cram it full of clerks, soldiers, lawyers and priests?'

Prior to discovering the knowledge of Benthamite theory brought to him by the shipwrecked books, Popanilla lives in a "state of nature" similar to paradise.