Lost world is a subgenre of the fantasy and science fiction genres built around the discovery of an unknown civilization, or of lands harboring creatures believed extinct. It began as a subgenre of the late Victorian adventure romance and remains popular into the twenty-first century, having arisen in an era when Western archaeologists were discovering and studying previously unknown civilizations through disciplines such as Egyptology, Assyriology and Mesoamerican studies, so that real archaeological finds directly inspired the genre's fiction; the number of published lost world narratives, set on every continent, rose sharply between 1871 and the First World War. The genre shares its themes with stories of mythical kingdoms such as Atlantis and El Dorado.
Facts
Notable ExampleKing Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard 1 Defining TraitDiscovery of an unknown Earth civilization and/or lands with creatures thought to be extinct 1 Sources
1. Lost world - Wikipedia
Section: History, first paragraph
Haggard's novel shaped the form and influenced later lost world narratives
Lead paragraph
that involves the discovery of an unknown Earth civilization and/or lands with creatures thought to be extinct.
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