Etidorhpa

Etidorhpa, or, the end of the earth: the strange history of a mysterious being and the account of a remarkable journey is the title of a scientific allegory or science fiction novel by John Uri Lloyd, a pharmacognocist and pharmaceutical manufacturer of Cincinnati, Ohio. Etidorpha was published during 1895.

The word "Etidorhpa" is the backward spelling of the name "Aphrodite." The first editions of Etidorhpa were distributed privately; later editions of the book also feature numerous fanciful illustrations by J. Augustus Knapp. Eventually a popular success, the book had eighteen editions and was translated into seven languages. Etidorhpa literary clubs were founded in the United States, and some parents named their infant daughters Etidorhpa.

Concept
The book purports to be a manuscript dictated by a strange being named I-Am-The-Man to a man named Llewyllyn Drury. Drury's adventure culminates in a trek through a cave in Kentucky into the core of the earth. Ideas presented in Etidorhpa include practical Alchemy, secret Masonic orders, the Hollow Earth theory and the concept of transcending the physical realm.

Hollow Earth
Etidorhpa belongs to a sub-genre of fiction that shares elements of science fiction, fantasy, Utopian fiction, and scientific (or pseudo-scientific) speculation. Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth is the most famous book of this type, though many others can be cited. During John Uri Lloyd's generation, Bulwer Lytton's The Coming Race was popular and influential. During the next generation, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a series of hollow-earth novels.

Drugs
Since Lloyd was a pharmacologist, his novel has provoked speculation that drug use contributed to its fantastic and visionary nature. Substances from marihuana and opium to nightshade, henbane, jimsonweed, and psilocybin mushrooms have been suggested as possibilities &mdash; though no real evidence on the matter is available.

Synopsis
The complex structure of the books begins with a Preface signed by Lloyd, which presents the frame concept, that Lloyd has discovered a thirty-year-old manuscript by Llewellyn Drury in a library. Then comes a Prologue in which Drury introduces himself.

The book's Chapter I begins the story of how Drury met the mysterious I-Am-The-Man, who reads his own manuscript account of his adventures to Drury over many sessions. The mysterious stranger, also known as The-Man-Who-Did-It, relates events that supposedly occurred another thirty years earlier, during the early part of the nineteenth century. In his account, the speaker is kidnapped by fellow members of a secret society, because he is suspected to be a threat to the society's secrecy. (This was likely based on the 1826 kidnapping of William Morgan and the start of the Anti-Masonry movement.) I-Am-The-Man is taken to a cave in Kentucky; there he is led by a cavern dweller on a long subterranean journey, which becomes an inner journey of the spirit as much as a geographical trip through underground realms.

The books blends passages on the nature of physical phenomena like gravity and volcanoes with spiritualist speculation, and adventure-story elements (like traversing a landscape of giant mushrooms). The whole ends with a summary letter from I-Am-The-Man and a conclusion from Drury. Subsequent editions of the book added various prefatory and supplementary materials.