A Product of Its Time

Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race is a product of its author’s views toward the scientific anomalies of his time. Originally, Bulwer published his work anonymously, most likely because he feared how society would receive a work that delved into scientific concepts considered to be controversial. The novel was published in 1871, which was twelve years after Charles Darwin published his work The Origin of Species and the controversial idea of evolutionary biology was introduced to society. In his novel, Bulwer addresses the Darwinian concepts of evolution and natural selection in regards to an inhuman subterranean race. This race, who call themselves the Vril-ya, live in a seemingly utopian society that is socially, technologically, and politically advanced but lacks an affinity towards art and fictional literature. According to this race, their common ancestor is a Giant Frog on the grounds that long ago a naturalist found “analogical and anatomical agreements in structure between an An and a Frog, as to show that out of one must have developed the other” (97). When informed of this, the narrator is appalled and refuses to believe that a race could have been descended from a tadpole. The idea that one species evolved from another parallels Darwin’s idea of evolution that man evolved from another animal species and was therefore not created by a divine being. The narrator’s reaction to this concept mimics the reaction that many of the time had to Darwin’s claims. Due to his portrayal of the race, it seems that Bulwer is a critic of evolution, arguing that a species that evolved out of another could never be considered human.