The Coming Race

An American taken down a mine by an engineer friend climbs into a chasm and finds a world beneath the earth, where a serene winged people wield an energy called vril that makes war pointless and everyone equal — and finds their perfection more frightening than any tyranny. Bulwer-Lytton's vril was taken literally by occultists for decades, and the name still sits on a beef extract jar. Fifty-seven plates of moonlight, forges and satirical moons trace the underground wonder and its earthly echoes through paintings by Thomas Rowlandson and George M. Woodward.