"Sea Monsters Unmasked" was written by aquarium director Henry Lee for the 1883 Fisheries Exhibition, along with "Sea Fables Explained." Sea Monsters Unmasked delves deeply into the Kraken, or giant squid, as well as Sea Serpents. The book is packed with data and illustrations gleaned from news sources and eyewitness accounts of cryptozoological subjects. Readers will enjoy its companion piece, Sea Fables Explained, which discusses a variety of creatures, including Merpeople, to round out their knowledge of the underwater cryptozoo menagerie.

"[...]that of the garden slug, which, having organs like those of the snail, as the octopus has organs like those of the shell-bearing argonaut, has no shell. The cuttles and squids may be compared to some of the sea-slugs, as Aplysia and Bullæa, and to some land-slugs, as Parmacella and Limax, which have an internal shell. The argonaut and the other families of the cephalopods do not come within the scope of this treatise; we will therefore confine our attention to the three above mentioned. Of the anatomy and homology of the Octopus, Sepia, and Calamary we need say no more than will suffice to show in what manner they resemble each other,[...]".

"Sea Monsters Unmasked and Sea Fables Explained" from Henry W. Lee. Prominent British socialist (1865-1932).

Sea Monsters Unmasked was published, along with its counterpart, Sea Fables Explained by aquarium director Henry Lee for the Fisheries Exhibition of 1883. Sea Monsters Unmasked discusses in-depth both the Kraken, or giant squid, and Sea Serpents. As Loren Coleman notes in the introduction, the books are small in size, but filled with data and illustrations taken from news sources and eyewitness accounts of his cryptozoological subjects. Part of the Loren Coleman Presents series for Cosimo Classics, readers are sure to enjoy its partner piece, Sea Fables Explained, which discusses a variety of creatures, including Merpeople, to round out their knowledge of the underwater cryptozoo menagerie. HENRY LEE (1826-1888) was the naturalist and director of the Brighton Aquarium in England. As a great observer of the collection's underwater life, and wrote the Aquarium Notes for the visitors and authored several books on underwater life, including The Octopus (1874) and Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), and Sea Fables Explained (1883). He was also a contributor to the magazine Land and Water. Lee died at age 62, after some years of ill-health, at Renton House, Brixton, on Halloween, October 31, 1888.

Henry Lee's Sea Monsters Unmasked is a classic volume in the skeptical canon, casting a critical gaze on the myths and legends of the sea, including the Kraken, the sea-serpent, mermaids, and more. Lee's investigations into the reality behind these myths was more than a century ahead of its time. This edition is an unabridged republication in one volume of the editions of Sea Monsters Unmasked and Sea Fables Explained published by William Clowes and Sons, Limited in 1883.

In myths and legends, squids are portrayed as fearsome sea-monsters, lurking in the watery deeps waiting to devour humans. Even as modern science has tried to turn those monsters of the deep into unremarkable calamari, squids continue to dominate the nightmares of the Western imagination. Taking inspiration from early weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, modern writers such as Jeff VanderMeer depict squids as the absolute Other of human civilization, while non-Western poets such as Daren Kamali depict squids as anything but threats. In Squid, Martin Wallen traces the many different ways humans have thought about and pictured this predatory mollusk: as guardians, harbingers of environmental collapse, or an untapped resource to be exploited. No matter how we have perceived them, squids have always gazed back at us, unblinking, from the dark.