It is strange to me Jock Calder of West Inch to feel that though now in the very centre of the nineteenth century I am but five-and-fifty years of age and though it is only once in a week perhaps that my wife can pluck out a little grey bristle from over my ear yet I have lived in a time when the thoughts and the ways of men were as different as though it were another planet from this.

The Great Shadow, also known as The Great Shadow and other Napoleonic Tales, is an action and adventure novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The novel takes place in the Napoleonic era on the English-Scottish border city called West Inch. The Great Shadow refers to the Napoleon's influence and his reputation that forms a shadow over West Inch.

Spurred by the woman he loves, young journalist Edward Malone eagerly joins forces with irascible Professor Challenger on an expedition to South America. Their mission is to verify Professor Challenger's claim of the existence of a Lost World: a mysterious Jurassic-age plateau untouched by human civilization, which holds the promise of treasure and of terror.