Violet Books

Decorative cloth graces the first edition of James Maclaren Cobban's The Tyrants of Kool-Sim (London: Henry, 1896). This great rarity has aissued frontis & other inserted plates by J. Brewster Fisher. A Lost Race of dwarves with magic powers is found in North Africa.

Another decorative binding gussioes up William Westall's Phantom City, A Volcanic Romance shown here in its first edition (Lomdon: Cassell, 1886). This time a Lost Race turns up in in Guatemala. Ev Bleiler in SF: The Early Yearsspeaks highly of it as "Intelligently written."

Ridgewell Cullum was better known for his western adventures, but when he set out to write a Haggardesque adventure, he produced a doozy. The Vampire of N'Gobi (New York: Lippincott, 1936) is seen here in its first edition dustwrapper. The jacket was a bit scruffy but I'm still waiting to see a better one; despite its condition the pictorial portion is unharmed and quite spectacular. An Asiatic lost race is found in central Africa, with the bloodsucking Queen Nita standing in for Ayesha. The tale was inspired by the author's personal investigation of the mysterious Zimbabwe ruins that came to be associated with Haggard's King Solomon's Mines in popular imagination.

Sir Edwin Lester Arnold's 1890 historical fantasy The Wonderful Adventures of Phra, the Phoenician had many editions, few so attractive as this one issued by Burt in the early 1910s in embossed art nouveau cloth. There is also a frontispiece depicting Phra and his beloved plus three more inserted action- & fantasy-oriented illustration plates by J. Watson Davis. This classic of weird heroic fantasy regards an immortal Phoenician's exploits in love & valor from the Roman age to Edwardian England. Author introduction.

Roger T. Finlay's "Wonder Island Boys" series had eight volumes & the first publisher, each volume with a different color pictorial cloth binding. The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen (New York Book Co., 1914) is typical of the beauty of these books. Through repeat escape-&-capture the wonder island castaways meet numerous island tribes, develop realistic survivalist techniques, & seek the treasure of a weird cavern. The islands are the remnant of Atlantis & the warring tribes are decayed Atlanteans. The last book in the series Treasures of the Islands (1915) even provides a map reconstructing the lost Atlantis as it must've been before it sank leaving only its former mountain peaks in the form of the Wonder Islands.

Gordon Stables' The Cruise of the Snow-bird: A Story of Arctic Adventure (New York: International Book Co, 1882) is seen here in pictorial binding. The Scottish ship's surgeon, himself having been on Arctic expeditions, wrote many sea adventures and was a lesser Stevenson. Episodes in this fantastic voyage novel include a journey into an inhabited arctic spirit-world; discovery of arctic forests; and a minor Lost Race element, the arctic aborigines being descended from a former more civilized humanity. This edition is illustrated throughout with thrilling wood engravings.

Here's Alec G. Pearson's The City of Flame! A Grand, Complete Story Of Thrilling Adventure (London: Amalgamated/Boys' Friend Library, 1915) in pictorial wraps depicting elegant onion-domes of an unknown city. It's a fantasy and lost-race adventure featuring Clytemna, Queen of the Land of Shoa. Haggard's She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed had made powerful queens de rigour for lost race adventures.

A decadent, amoral Atlantis is the subject of Phyllis Cradock's tale of the well-famed & ancient civilization before it's demise. Gateway to Remembrance (London: Dakers, 1949) is shown here in its colorful illustration of a misleadingly pastoral Atlantean scene. There is a sequel entitled Eternal Echo.

This is the first edition dustwrapper for H. Rider Haggard's When the World Shook: Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley & Arbuthnot (New York: Longmans, 1919). The artwork by Enos Comstock is repeated as a tissued frontispiece, which is nice since the dustwrapper is way too rare. There are four star-charts within, showing the arrangement of heavens 250,000 years ago when Oro the Atlantean went into suspension, compared to what he charted upon awakening in the Victorian world. This archly fantastic tale involves spirit travel, reincarnation, teleportation, a subterranean city, elixir of life -- conveyed with considerable mythic depth.

The first author to invent a biography of a prehistoric cave man was Stanley Waterloo, The Story of Ab: A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man having been written in 1897. It served as a model of many imitations that followed, to Waterloo's annoyance. The dustwrapper shown here is from a 1933 edition from Doubleday Doran; it covers a lovely emobossed cloth.The jacket's pictorial is by Charles R. Knight, a scientific illustrator who did the original painting for a museum display.

Earle Danesford was the pseudonym of F. Addington Symonds. The Lure of Ophir: A Gripping Yarn of Thrills & Adventure In the Rhodesian Hinterland (London: Amalgamated/Boys' Friend Library, 1924) was set in Rhodesia cum Zimbabwe, not least because H. Rider Haggard popularized the famous Zimbabwe ruins as the best site for a hidden kingdom. The pictorial trade paperback depicts the titular lost city.

Murray Roberts was the pseudonym of Robert Murray Graydon, whose The Hidden Land: Excitement, Amusement, and Thrills With Famous Captain Justice and Co. in India (London: Amalgamated/Boys' Friend Library, New Series,1936) sports another lovely pictorial wrapper. A tale of science fiction and fantastic adventure. It is no accident that Captain Justice looks like another popular fictional hero of the day, Cutcliffe-Hyne's creation Captain Kettle, who himself encountered lost races and had weird adventures from time to time.