Violet Books

San Francisco Decadent W. C. Morrow's best known for the classic weird collection The Ape, the Idiot, & Other People; you can see that book's binding in the Art Nouveau Ghost gallery. Bill Morrow found H. Rider Haggard's Lost Race novels infections. His foray into the form was Lentala of the South Seas (Stokes, 1908) featuring an Oceanic people with an Ayesha-like ruler. The gorgeous pictorial boards -- inlaid color portrait over embossed totemic beast -- as well as the interior color plates, are the work of Maynard Dixon.

Rosa Campbell Praed's Fugitive Anne (Fenno, 1904) is one of the finer Haggardesque tales, with Anne becoming a new Ayesha when abandoned among the Atlantean/ Mayan Lost Race who worship a monstrous tortoise. The book also features several unusual plates including a full color frontis, by Clare Angell. As a little-known aside, the intercalated poem "Hymn to Xibal, Lord of Death" was written by Mrs. Praed's lover of many years, Nancy Harwood.

Leo E. Miller's The Hidden People: The Story of a Search for for Incan Treasure (Scribners, 1920) is a Lost Race fantasy with elegant binding and fabulous illustration plates by Paul Bransom. Its sequel issued the following year carefully preserved the layout scheme of the binding with another Bransom illustration, resulting in a very winning matched set.

Leo E. Miller's In the Tiger's Lair (1921) sports an attractive embossed pictorial binding by Paul Bransom, besides four illustration plates within, again by Bransom. Lost races frequently live in places where prehistoric species of animals are similarly hanging tough against extinction. In this completely independent sequel to The Hidden People our adventurers return to South America in search of treasure. In addition to the classical Incas, they are also menaced by sabertooth tigers.

Talbot Mundy's The Devil's Guard is somewhat a sequel to another Jimgrim novel, The Nine Unknown. The character of Jimgrim is Mundy's equivalent of Haggard's Allan Quatermain. This time he's on a quest for the hidden country of Shamballa, encountering good adepts & evil adepts in the course of an occult adventure. The dustwrapper shown is from the "First Oriental Club Edition", Philadelphia, 1945. The tale appeared earlier from Bobbs-Merrill, 1926.

George Menville Fenn's lost race fantasy The Golden Magnet: A Tale of the Land of the Incas (London: Blackie, 1883, seen here in a 1901 edition) has an excellent pictorial binding -- even the spine has a great design depicting the strange magnet -- plus six interior illustration plates. The Incas were a favorite for the Lost Race romancers because so many of the ruins stood in evidence of their high culture with newly reported ruins discovered every few years -- lending to the hope that vital cities might indeed turn up in tropical jungles. The complaints of actual Incans, "We ain't dead yet!" was merely added fuel for the romancers.

This splendiferous pictorial binding in multicolor pastels on blue cloth graces Willis Boyd Allen's The Lion City of Africa (London: Partridge, 1890). Not visible here is the art nouveau floral spine. There are also 16 interior illustrations. The Lost Race genre is forever stamped by the influence of H. Rider Haggard. The tale is about an ancient lost city deep in the wilds of Africa, inhabited by lions worshipped by a race of pygmies. Unusual for this type of book is the accuracy of descriptions of African flora & fauna.

Oliphant Smeaton's A Mystery of the Pacific (London: Blackie, 1904 New Edition) reveals a Lost Race of classical Roman society on an uncharted island in the Saragasso Sea. This fabulous tale delivers even more than average, with an additional aboriginal people with their own underground city (Hollow Earth theme), these being a remnant of Atlantis.

George Griffith's The Romance of Golden Star (London: White, 1897) sports a lovely sleeping goddess figure. This is a Lost Race science fantasy about the restoration of the Inca empire. There are six splendid illustration plates by Alfred Pearse.

Francis Rolt-Wheeler's The Aztec-Hunters (Boston: Lothrop Lee, 1918) is the third in the Museum Series, endorsed by the American Museum of Natural History. The quest for the Aztecs is a boys' adventure-romance built around actual Museum artifacts. Besides the handsome pictorial binding, there are many photo-illustrations throughout.

H. Kaner's People of the Twilight (Llandudno, Wales: Kaner, 1946) is an example of the transmutation of the Lost Race motif for an age that believes the whole world is too well mapped for such people to remain unfound. By means of a drug, a professor finds access to an inhabited other-dimensional world.