Haggard wrote some wonderful books. A couple of others you really should read are "She", and "When the World Shook".

Haggard basically invented the "lost civilisation" genre and wrote some excellent examples of it.

Maybe the Atlantis legend was an early example of the 'lost civilisation' genre.

An early novel on the theme was 'Symzonia' from 1820.

Violet Books has an excellent essay on lost race literature on their website:
http://www.violetbooks.com/lostrace.html

and
http://www.violetbooks.com/lin-carter.html

Ben - It turns out that Violet Books has a couple dozen essays on Haggard, and a large collection of essays on other topics as well. I've bookmarked the site for future reading, as I sometimes enjoy a semi-scholarly analysis of works of literature.

The link is http://www.violetbooks.com/essaylist.html

Enjoy!

SteveK

It was one of my favorite books when I was a kid and it worked really good for my kids 30 yeras later. Any parent will tell you that It's always a problem to find a book, which will take your kid's attention away from TV or video game. I can say, that KSM probably is the book.

One more thing
I belive that statement that "Haggard basically invented the "lost civilisation" genre" is a bit of exaggeration. It can be an interesting research - who did? Probably somebody in Ptolemeus times. Remember the story of Atlantida? But if we're looking for someone closer to Haggard times it's Jules Vern. He wrote his 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' 20 years before Haggard wrote his KSM.

I really don't think that "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" counts as a "Lost Civilization" story; do you? The explorers encounter dinosaurs (in fact, it's the first novel to describe them!) but there are no people involved other than the explorers themselves. It's a "lost world" novel, but not a "lost civilization" one.

The legend of Atlantis comes, of course, from Plato's unfinished dialog, the "Critias", written in the 4th century BC, but again it's not a "novel".

Can you suggest any writer earlier than Haggard who wrote an honest-to-goodness "Lost Civilization" novel?

Bulwer-Lytton "Vril, The Power of the Coming Race" (1871) ?

Yes, that's certainly earlier. KSM was written in 1885.

No, I can't! But, you know, what's the difference btw. lost world and lost civilization? Presence of 'humanoids' in the story? Or humanoid's participation in the plot? General idea is that good guys go to some hidden places and see exotic things. What about Kin Kong? The island where he lived, was lost world or lost civilization? They were some locals I believe, but can we call them representatives of civilization? Giant chimp were more human then they were. The line is way to thin.
In 1924 Russian scientist Obruchev wrote his lost civilization novel - The Land of Sannikov. An expedition found a prosperous island in Arctic Ocean off the Siberia cost, and there we have bloody struggle of two civilizatios - Scientific/Soviet and prehistoric one. Then volcano eruption destroys everything. No winners. :sad3:

I would say, personally, that the difference is that a "lost world" novel involves someone going to a previously unknown place, whereas a "lost civilisation" novel involves going to an unknown place and discovering a "society" there. ie, lost civilisation novels are a subset of lost world novels.

That's just my definition, of course.