Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a prolific and popular English novelist, published _The Coming Race_ anonymously in 1871, a work of science fiction describing a technologically and physically superior subterranean civilization, the Vril-ya, whose entire society and power are founded on their mastery of vril, a single, all-purpose energy the novel presents as capable of healing the sick, destroying enemies, and powering machinery, wielded through a specialized staff or wand. The novel was one of the most widely read works of its decade and helped popularize the science fiction genre's interest in hidden advanced civilizations and unknown energies, themes that recurred across late Victorian fiction; Bulwer-Lytton himself gave no public indication that vril was meant as anything other than an invented plot device suited to his story.
Bulwer-Lytton's own real-world reputation, including rumored connections to Rosicrucian circles and his known interest in mesmerism and the occult more broadly, made it easy for some contemporary and later readers to suspect the novel contained more than fiction, that Bulwer-Lytton was using a novel's cover to hint at genuine hidden knowledge rather than simply telling a story. The book's title itself supplied "vril" as a lasting neologism, later even lending its name to Bovril, the beef extract product, whose marketers borrowed the word specifically to suggest their product contained a vril-like vital strength.