This early work by Edward Bulwer-Lytton was originally published in 1871 and we are now republishing it with a brand new biography. Vril, the Power of the Coming Race is credited with contributing to the birth of the science fiction genre and popularising the fringe 'Hollow Earth' theory. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC, was born in London in 1803. At the age of just fifteen, he published his first collection, Ishmael and Other Poems. He attended Cambridge University, where won the prestigious Chancellor's Gold Medal, and in the year of his graduation published another collection, Weeds and Wild Flowers. Alongside a career in politics - most notably as Secretary of State for the Colonies - Bulwer-Lytton's literary career blossomed out of the successes of his youth. He wrote in a variety of genres, often under pseudonyms, in order to fund an extravagant lifestyle.