Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Luis Senarens
Chapter 20 -- More Boys Club Serials
Jack Wright was the Edisonade hero of the 121-volume
Victorian dime novel series written by Luis Senarens, the
"American Jules Verne." A few Jack Wright stories were also
credited to Francis W. Doughty.
Senarens also popularized the Frank Reade dime novel
series, having taken the reins from Harry Enton, the
pseudonym of Harold Cohen. Who wrote what gets a bit
confusing.
Senarens took Reade’s exploits to Antarctica, Australia,
Central America, Central Asia, the jungles of Africa, inside the
hollow earth and even the edge of space. Reade inventions
included electric locomotives, one-person battery-powered
electric flying suits, "electric cannons" (pneumatic machine
guns), an instant camera, motorcycle-like bicycle cars, armed
and armored all-terrain omnibuses, chariot-like "electric
phaetons" and yachts that could travel underwater.
Jules Verne's influence in apparent in Senarens' titles, the ones about underground waters listed
below.
Frank Reade, Jr., Exploring an Underground River with his Submarine Boat (1892)
Six Weeks in the Great Whirlpool (1893)
100 Miles Below the Surface of the Sea (1894)
Lost in the Great Undertow (1894)
The Underground Sea (1894)
Over the South Pole (1895)
1,000 Fathoms Deep (1895)
7,000 Miles Underground (1895)
50,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1895)
The Black Whirlpool (1895)
Lost in the Polar Circle (1896)
For Six Weeks Buried in a Deep Sea Cave (1894)
Wrecked at the Pole, or Jack Wright's Daring Adventures in the Frozen Sea (1896)
Reade slaughters Indians and Africans by the thousands and loots whatever's not nailed down.
Irish, Afro-American, Jews and Mexicans are all met with ridicule. Senarens was a low point of
American popular fiction.
Alpheus Hyatt Verrill
Verrill enjoyed callings other than pulp fiction, one as natural history editor of Webster's
International Dictionary, another as inventor of the autochrome process of natural-color
photography. Of Verrill's more than 100 fictional works, we've the four-volume Boy Adventurers
series, and with a given name as Arcadian as "Alpheus," the author of course had his Boy
Adventurers discover underground rivers.
In The Boy Adventurers in the Land of the Monkey Men (1923), Fred, Harry, and Dr. Woodward,
visiting British Guiana in search of a radium deposit, are taken captive by bush negroes. On
escaping they find themselves in a valley inhabited by black-skinned, flat-footed, broad-faced,
mop-haired giants. The king of the giants, however, is treacherous, and it is only by luck that the
explorers survive his schemes. Woodward teaches the savages how to make rude stone tools
and weapons. Making their escape through an underground river, they continue on their search
for radium.
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