# The Lost World — Character guide

> Key figures in The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle.

- [Professor G. E. Challenger](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/professor_challenger.md): Challenger dominates every room he enters, whether lecturing a hostile hall of scientists or bullying his own expedition into shape. His ferocious temper and theatrical vanity are matched by a genuine, fearless hunger fo
- [Lord John Roxton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/lord_john_roxton.md): Roxton's rooms are a museum of trophies and oars, and his manner is as spare and deliberate as his aim. He joins the expedition not for science but for the sheer pull of the unknown, and his steadiness under fire becomes
- [Professor Summerlee](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/professor_summerlee.md): Summerlee is sixty-six, stringy, absentminded, and utterly indifferent to hardship — a scientist who trusts only what he can pin and label. His running feud with Challenger gives the expedition its sharpest friction, yet
- [E. D. Malone](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/ed_malone.md): Malone narrates the expedition with a journalist's eye and a young man's hunger to matter, driven by Gladys's refusal to love a man who has done nothing. His assignment to expose Challenger as a fraud flips into a place 
- [Zambo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/zambo.md): Zambo serves the expedition with quiet competence, handling the practical work of camp and river while the scientists argue about bones and reputations. His fidelity becomes a lifeline when the plateau's cliffs cut the p
- [Gladys](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/gladys.md): Gladys refuses Malone not out of cruelty but out of an honest, romantic idealism: she wants a Burton or a Stanley, a man whose glories she could reflect. Her rejection sends Malone straight into Challenger's orbit and on
- [McArdle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/mcardle.md): McArdle is the news editor Malone actually knows, the first lieutenant beneath a remote chief whose mind hovers over the Balkans. He listens to Malone's plea for an adventurous mission with alarm, then pivots to a scheme
- [Mr. Hungerton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/mr_hungerton.md): Gladys's father, who disapproves of Malone's courtship.
- [Gomez](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/gomez.md): Gomez is one of the local hands hired for the Amazon journey, praised as a willing worker but dogged by the vice of curiosity common to such men. Caught lurking near the expedition's planning hut, he whips out a knife on
- [Wild Indians](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/indians.md): These Indians inhabit the remote village where the exhausted, flaxen-haired Maple White is taken in as a complete stranger, and they figure in his sketchbook as subjects of careful study. They are neither purely hostile 
- [Maple White](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/maple_white.md): American explorer whose diary and sketches first revealed the Lost World.
- [Dr. Illingworth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/dr_illingworth.md): Doctor who attends to Challenger after an attack.
- [Mr. Percival Waldron](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/mr_percival_waldron.md): Solicitor who handles legal matters for the expedition.
- [Tarp Henry](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/tarp_henry.md): Friend of Malone who works at a scientific institute.
- [Sir George Beaumont](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/beaumont.md): Wealthy patron who finances part of the expedition.
- [Jimmy Colver](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters/jimmy_colver.md): Explorer who previously attempted to reach the plateau.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_lost_world_se/characters