A Derbyshire lead mine, a company that wants it, an engineer who will not sell, and a vein of ore called the White Virgin that has killed men before. Fenn was a printer and schoolmaster who wrote some 175 books, most of them adventures set underground or at sea; he knew mining machinery, and the accident scenes are the reason the book still holds. Sixty plates by painters including David Cox and Hans Baluschek follow the mills, forges and working landscapes that give the novel its underground world.