This is one of the great masterpieces of occult fiction, astonishing considering when it was written. It was an important influence on the later esoteric movements of the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is usually beautifully written, but does have parts which are a little slow going. The author is also obsessed with the French Revolution, you will actually find Robespierre as a character in the book! The best parts -- the premiere of the opera of the violinist, the description of Mejnour's castle, the Greek island, the calling of Adon-Ai, are unforgettable.

This is a beautifully written novel which reveals through the use of storytelling many occult mysteries. After reading this wonderful book, I was surprised to realize how many of my other books make reference to it. Overall, a delightful story with profound implications.

I have read few books that can artistically work with esoteric content without getting trite, awkward or moralistic. In my opinion, "The Celestine Prophecy" is a figment that should have been left sealed in the author's imagination. "Zanoni" on the other hand is a tale with an intriguing plot that all the while leads the reader into unexpected and profound esoteric content. This is a book I will be returning to read several more times.

This is a wonderful book. It is a unique mystical romance set during the French revolution. It abounds with poetry and morally lessons of good verses evil. If you are the sensitive type, keep the kleenex close by !!.. If you are the intellectual type, the social-political aspects will intrigue you.

Quite simply the best book I have ever read. The book is exciting, thoughtful and concept expanding.

Ernest Maltravers and Alice or the Mysteries is a two part series written around 1834 and 1835 by Edward Lord Lytton Bulwer, an author popular in his time but eclipsed by Dickens and his contemporaries. This is a remarkably tender story of a wealthy aristocratic young man Ernest Maltravers, who meets, becomes a guardian for and falls in love with a poor innocent and uneducated young beautiful girl Alice. Her father happens to be a very bad apple from whom she flees, after he tries to rob and murder Maltravers, who stops at their cottage when he is lost. Alice warns Ernest of his peril and he escapes. Her father beats her and she runs away and finds Ernest and lives with him. He cares for her and hires a tutor for her and falls in love with her. She does not know his name, and he has to leave for a while since his father is dying. During the time Ernest is gone her father and a crony rob houses and rob Ernest's house and kidnaps ALice. Ernest returns and is broken hearted to find her gone without a trace. The books then tell of the next 18 years from then as they go through life and try to find each other again. Neither one ever finds a love that they shared with anyone else. I wont tell you if they find each other again. Buy the books and read and enjoy Bulwer's enchanting prose and his outstanding story. This would make a great movie!

"Ernest Maltravers" is the first part of a series written around 1834 and 1835 by Edward Lord Lytton Bulwer, The sequel or second part is "Alice or the Mysteries" also available from Amazon. This is a remarkably tender story of a wealthy aristocratic young man Ernest Maltravers, who meets, becomes a guardian for and falls in love with a poor innocent and uneducated young beautiful girl Alice. Her father happens to be a very bad apple from whom she flees, after he tries to rob and murder Maltravers, who first meets Alice when he stops at their cottage when he is lost. Alice warns Ernest of his peril and he escapes. Her father beats her and she runs away and finds Ernest and lives with him. Feeling indebted to ALice for saving his life, he cares for her and hires a tutor for her to educate her. He then falls in love with her. She does not know his real name, since he is going by an alias since they are living together, Ernest has to leave for a while, when he reads in a newspaper that his father is dying. During the time Ernest is gone Alice's father and a crony rob houses and rob Ernest's house and kidnap Alice. Ernest returns and is broken hearted to find her gone without a trace. He does not know also that she is now carrying his child. The books then tell of the next 18 years from then as they go through life and try to find each other again. Neither one ever finds a love that they shared with anyone else. I wont tell you if they find each other again. Buy the books and read and enjoy Bulwer's enchanting prose and his outstanding story. This would make a great movie!

This book is fabulous. It really transports you back to the Anglo-Saxon era. I originally read it because I wanted to read about William the Conqueror, but now I'm a huge Harold I "fan."

A fabulous book of rare quality. The particular one I read was original from 1851. Smooth writing for the time period with entertaining narrative and dialogue.

If you are a serious student of the occult this book is a must! Each and every character and movement has a place in the understanding of the Mystical Dance in which we are all involved. "Zanoni" and "Mejnour" will teach you the harmonic scales, however your ears must be finely attuned to their music. This a great Rosicrucian novel! loreto

This is a romantic historical novel, with a convoluted and exciting romantic story of passion, hate, revenge, and adventure. So what? There are many books like that, most of them pretty cheap and predictable. The trick, of course, is the writing. Bulwer Lytton, an early Victorian character with his own peculiarities (he was very interested in the mystical cults of Rome) is an extraordinary storyteller. The plot, as I said, is long to summaryze, but it concerns Glauco, a Greek stud who is beloved by almost every woman in the story; Ione, the Naples girl he loves; Nadia, a blind slave who is -of course- in love with Glauco, and the excellently portrayed Arbaces, a priest of the cult of Isis, the Egyptian goddess. Two other interesting characters are Julia, a rich and mean heiress who is, alas, in love with Glauco, and Salustio, a dissipated and drunken Roman.

The plot revolves around the constant intrigues of the characters, which include magic love-potions, betrayals and heroism. But at the back of the action, there is a volcano about to explode and leave this town covered by tons of dust and volcanic rock. The characters are planning their lives and lusting for passion, without knowing that they have no future. Like some of us, maybe.

Summing up, this novel is great entertainment, intelligent fun. The best, in my opinion, is the re-creation of a lost world, a city full of color and passion, living in full while Destiny works its own way.

Though the description is overdone and the plot rather creaking, I was caught up by both the description and the story. Glaucus, an Athenian in Pompeii, loves Ione, as does Arbaces, an Egyptian of evil. Nydia, a blind slave, also loves Glaucus. Arbaces kills Apaecides, brother of Ione, who has become a Christian, and then blames the killing on Glaucus, who has become temporarily crazed by a supposed love potion given him by Nydia--after Nydia took it from Julia, who had gotten it from a witch at Arbaces' urging. To illustarte the fulsome style: "The eyes of the crowd folowed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine-tree, the trunk, blackness,--the branches, fire!--a fire, that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare!" You will not soon forget this awesome book.

This historically accurate novel is filled with exceptional characters and an intriguing plot. Set in the days before the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvious, the novel highlights several stories at once, dealing with romance, adventure, and treachery. Edward Bulwer-Lytton did an excellent job in making the story deep and colorful. It is perfect for students studying Roman culture, as well as anyone looking for a good novel. This book is definitely a classic worth reading!

One of the earliest science fiction novels in English, *The Coming Race* was published in 1871 and became an immediate bestseller (it ran through 8 editions in its first 18 months and was later reprinted with the title *Vril: the Power of the Coming Race*). It tells the story of an American mining engineer who descends into the center of the earth and encounters a humanoid subterranean people whose extraordinary technological and telekinetic power proceeds from their control of a mysterious energy called "vril." Through the power of vril they are able to fly, effortlessly move huge objects, and even destroy their enemies from a great distance (by what amounts to an early version of guided missiles). With such immense power freely available to all, war has become a practical impossibility among the subterraneans, who content themselves instead with perfecting their intellectual and artistic accomplishments. However, much in the manner of certain episodes of *Startrek* (a hundred years later), their serene superiority is shown to be inimical to all that is most truly creative in the human spirit. Without human passions, without human strife, the subterraneans's existence is shown to run counter to the most fundamental aspects of the human condition. It is a frightening prospect, therefore, that they believe their destiny is to return to the surface of the earth (whence they had descended, aeons before, during the Biblical flood) to supplant the inferior races living there -- hence they are the *coming* race. The author of the book, Edward Bulwer Lytton, one of the most popular of all Victorian novelists (who in 1866 had been raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton of Knebworth) declared that one of his main aims was to satirise the Darwinian biology of *The Origin of Species* and the political ideals of John Stuart Mill's *The Emancipation of Women*. Accordingly,the novel contains amusing pseudo-scientific passages on the supposed evolution of the subterraneans -- who believe they are descended not from apes but from frogs -- and some rather heavy-handed gender reversal, whereby the subterranean women are larger, stronger, more dominant (and hairier) than the men. Though aspects of the novel now seem labored and unsubtle, it remains a fascinating book in its mid-Victorian vision of dystopian science and politics. Its most unlikely claim to fame? It was so successful that the word vril briefly entered the language (see OED), signifying a strength-giving elixir. The household name (at least in the UK) of the beef extract product "Bovril," first marketed in the early 1880s, is a composite of the words "bovine" and "vril". Few, if any, novels can claim so commercial an influence! Highly recommended.

This book, although written over one hundred years ago by Lord Lytton, contains some of the most futuristic thinking I've ever read about. I read the book in 2 days and was glued to it by the suspense and captivated by the fascination of the society described in it. The story is about a man who stumbles upon an unknown society, living underground, which lead their lives by the principles of VRIL, a life force that is all powerful and healing yet capable of utter destrucion. Every person in this society has the power of this force from birth on and is thus capable of destroying any of his fellow men. This forced the society, named Vrilya, to evolve into a perfect utopian harmony where everyone posesses free will and is completely tolerant of each other.

Written in first person from the view point of the man who discovered them, the book is written in an easy to read language. It relays satiric undertones regarding democracy and imperialism and contains many ideas of anthroposophy, including the Vrilya belief of life after death. The Vrilya are shown to be a more evolved human race, by many thousand years, and are believed to have descended from survivors of the Great Flood, who as a result fled underground. It shows what the future may look like for us, but hinges on the discovery and mastery of the life force, VRIL. Although there seem to be some inconsistencies in the description and behavior of the soceity, they were not grave enough to keep me from reading more. This book should be read by anyone who likes books like 1984, The Brave New World or even A Wrinkle in Time. Unlike the books just mentioned, Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, displays a fundamentally different view of our possible future. A future not ruled by authoritarians or Big Brother, or drugs or reward and punishment, but a future that requires everyone to live peacefully and happily through the consequences of their own power.

All in all, the story is sure to captivate and when keeping in mind when it was written, it is all the more amazing. I loved it, because it made me think about how we live today and the way we could live together without the negatives of our society. It also made me think about how we (The United States) should behave as the most "advanced" country on earth. I was also fascinated by the potential of the human race which we don't realize in every day life. I am sure anyone who reads this great book will love it too.

Written in 1871 The Coming Race was one of the last books ever written by the author, he died two years later. The story begins when an American civil engineer falls into an underground world. There he discovers a subterranean paradise inhabited by a race called the Vril-ya.These Vril-ya tell the narrator that they are descended from ancestors who escaped the 'upper world' as a result of a deluge which covered the earth. Their evolution has taken a certain course mainly because of the discovery of an energy source, similar to electricity.This energy, from which they also take their name, is called Vril. Lytton's narrative, published in the same year as The Descent of Man, is one of the first truly post-Darwinian novels. It incorporates many of the scientific ideas of the period, and the subsequent fears of degeneration and devolution. The narrator soon discovers that this subterranean paradise is not all that it seems. Lurking in an unlit region of this underground world are a race of primitive savages, who like Wells's Morlocks, represent the flipside of evolution. Without Vril the savages have not progressed, they live in darkness, eat meat and resemble animals. In contrast, the Vril-ya live perfect lives, they are physically beautiful and have developed the abvility to fly with the help of Vril. The narrator appears to have stumbled into a parasise where a race of angels live in perfect harmony, without conflict, without envy and where all men are considered equal. The one thing that this future paradise cannot overcome is boredom.Tthe narrator concludes that although mankind dreams of perfectibility it is a pleasure that we are not meant to enjoy, at least not in this lifetime. Worth a read, especially if you are interested in the history of Science Fiction.

Written in 1871 The Coming Race was the last novel ever written by Lytton, he died two years later. The story begins when an American civil engineer falls into an underground world. He discovers a civilisation inhabited by a race called the Vril-ya who tell him that they are descended from ancestors who escaped the 'upper world' as a result of a deluge which covered the earth. Their evolution has taken a certain course mainly because of the discovery of an energy source, similar to electricty. This energy, from which they also take their name, is called Vril. Lytton's dystopic narrative is influenced by the post-Darwinian fears of degeneration and devolution. He soon discovers that this subterranean paradise is not all that it seems. Lurking in an unlit region of this underground world are a race of primitive savages who, like Wells's Morlocks, represent the flipside of evolution. Without Vril the savages have not progressed, they live in darkness, eat meat and resemble animals. In contrast the Vril-ya live perfect lives, they are beautiful and have developed the ability, with the help of Vril, to fly. The narrator appears to have stumbled into a paradise where a race of angels live in perfect harmony, without conflict, without envy and where all men are considered equal. The one thing that this future paradise cannot overcome is boredom. The narrator concludes that although mankind dreams of perfectibility it is a pleasure that we are not meant to enjoy, at least not in this world. Worth a read, especially if you are interested in the development of science fiction.