Only a relative few of his fifty-eight works of fiction can be categorized in this way, however. Ranging far and wide in both time and space, he wrote novels of pure adventure and conflict; tales of the Zulus and their tortured history; imitations of sagas; anti-Boer stories; and a kind of Neanderthal tale about the distant ancestor of one of his most memorable characters, Allan Quatermain. His mysteries are King Solomon's Mines (1885), She (1886), Allan Quatermain (1887), Mr. Meeson's Will (1888), Ayesha: The Return of She (1905), and She and Allan (1921). Ultimately Haggard's reputation rests on King Solomon's Mines and She, the works that have been most read through the years, have never been out of print, and still maintain their perennial attraction.
Most of Haggard's romances, including his mysteries, belong to the high-romantic tradition, wherein certain exceptional people encounter extraordinary experiences of apparently profound significance. Their basic fictional mode is that of the quest: the journey through innumerable perils and crises toward a goal of great consequence, the mode of romantic adventure from Odysseus to Indiana Jones. In Haggard's time this type of writing had not been highly regarded; and his work in the genre, along with that of contemporaries such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and Rudyard Kipling, signified a revival of interest in romantic fiction.
This is a free page. This page contains 195 words. This
biography contains 3,346 words (approx. 11 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our H(enry) Rider Haggard Access Pass.
