A well-travelled journalist James Edward Preston Muddock – though he was better known as Joyce Emerson Preston Muddock, wrote prolifically in a number of genres. The vast majority of his output were sensational detective stories in which „Dick Donovan" was the main character. In the 'lost world' novel „The Sunless City" (1905), Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin pilots a submarine through a bottomless lake. Upon passing through a hole lined with gold, he finds a strange underground world...