Rider Haggard Biography and List of Works

Prolific English writer, who made his literary name with books on Africa, based on his experiences of that continent. Haggard's best-known novel is the romantic adventure KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1885). Haggard also was an agricultural reformer and a servant of the Empire.

Henry Rider Haggard was born in West Bradenham Hall, Norfolk, as the eight son of William Haggard, a barrister and a country squire, and Ella (Doventon) Haggard, an amateur writer. In his childhood his father saw young Henry Rider as the family dunce. Haggard educated at a London day school, privately, and Ipswich Grammar School. After failing the army entrance, Haggard went in 1875 to Natal as a secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, Governor of Natal colony. In 1877 he joined the staff of the special commissioner. Next year he became Master and Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal. For the rest of his life Haggard remained convinced of the British obligations to imperial responsibility, sharing this view with his friend Rudyard Kipling.

During these years Haggard got acquainted with the Zulu culture. He had an affair with an African woman. This relationship influenced his works and subsequent psychoanalytic interpretations of Haggard's novels. Among them is Carl Jung, who used the novel SHE (1887) as an example of anima. According to Jung, the anima is an archetypical form, expressing the fact that a man has a minority of female genes, and Haggard's Queen Ayesha is an unmistakable anima type - the ultimate guide and mediator to the inner world. The idea has also connections with the views presented in James Frazer's classical study The Golden Bough.

She depicts an adventurer, Leo Vincey, who goes to Africa to avenge the death of an ancestor, Kallikrates. He was an Egyptian priest slain by an ancient sorceress She-Who-Must-Be Oboyed, queen Ayesha, a 2000-year-old ruler of the Lost World of Kör. She saves Leo's life and finds a mysterious bond between him and Kallikrates. Leo is both revolted and tempted by her extraordinary beauty and by the promise of immortality. She promises to make him live forever if they walk together into a pillar of flame. Ayesha enters the Fire of Life at the heart of a volcano, and emerges from it immeasurably old. She dies and asks Leo to remember her in her eternal youth and beauty. Ayesha turns into a pile of dust and the nothing. - The story was followed by two sequels, AYESHA (1905) and WISDOM'S DAUGHTER (1923).

After Haggard returned in England, he married a Norfolk heiress, Mariana Louisa Margitson. They moved to Transvaal to Haggard's ostrich farm. When Transvaal had to be ceded to the Dutch, they went back to England, where Haggard studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1884.

However, Haggard hardly practiced: he had retired to a Norfolk country house and devoted himself into writing. He had earlier published a study of contemporary African history and some unsuccessful novels. R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island had just appeared, and Haggard did not think much of the book. Haggard made a five-shilling bet that he could write better one. The outcome was his adventure story, King Solomon's Mines, which became a bestseller. It has been in print ever since. Haggard repeated his success with three novels set in Africa - She, JESS and ALLAN QUATERMAIN, all published in 1887. The author's fantasy and myth-making later inspired several film directors. Allan Quatermain (1987), directed by Gary Nelson, was a follow up to 1985's King Solomon's Mines (1985), directed J. Lee-Thompson and starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone. The favourite adventure novel has been filmed half a dozen times.

As a writer Haggard tried his had in several forms of the novel: psychological (MR. MEESON'S WILL), historical (CLEOPATRA) and fantastic (STELLA FREGELIUS). He wrote over 40 books, including MONTEZUMA'S DAUGHTER (1894), PEARL MAIDEN (1903), QUEEN SHEBA'S RING (1910) and MOON OF ISRAEL (1918). SMITH AND THE PHARAOHS (1920), a collection of short stories, includes his only ghost story, 'Only a Dream'.

"And now that time which she foresaw has come, and Heaven knows that I have thought of her, poor dear. Ah! Those footsteps of one dead that will echo through our lives, those woman's footprints on the marble flooring which will not be stamped out. Most of us have heard and seen them at some time or other, and I hear and see them very plainly tonight. Poor dead wife, I wonder if there are any doors in the land where you have gone through which you can creep out to look at me tonight? I hope that there are none. Death must indeed be a hell if the dead can see and feel and take measure of the forgetful faithlessness of their beloved."
(from 'Only a Dream')

In 1895 Haggard stood unsuccessfully for parliament for East Norfolk, and between the years 1912 and 1917 he travelled extensively as a member of the Dominions Royal Commission. Haggard was an expert on agricultural and social conditions in England and on colonial migration. His books on farming, such as THE FARMER'S YEAR BOOK and RURAL ENGLAND, were the result of long journeys through the country and intensive research. For his non-fiction, such as THE POOR AND THE LAND (1905), and for his government services, Haggard was knighted in 1912 and in 1919 he was created Knight Commander of the British Empire. Haggard died in London, on May 14, 1925.

Haggard's works were full of action in exotic locations, and although they first were written for adults, several of them belong now to the juvenile literature. Some of Haggard's view's, especially his paternalism, anti-Semitism, and belief of a Jewish world wide conspiracy, revealed in Haggard's diaries published in 1980, have shadowed his otherwise decent and humane reputation, His fascination with the Zulu culture can be seen in his portraits of Umbopa in King Solomon's Mines and Umslopogaas in Allan Quatermain, as well in the Zulu trilogy MARIE (1912), CHILD OF STORM (1913), and FINISHED (1917). Hints of Haggard's fin-de siècle pessimism and the stresses of his private life - although married to another, he lived for years close to the woman he had always loved - have undermined straightforward interpretations of the author's work.

King Solomon's Mines (1885) - The novel was inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good and Allan Quatermain, accompanied by Umbopa, their native servant, set off to reveal the fate of Curtis's missing brother - he has gone to look for the treasure of King Solomon in the land of Kukuanas. They cross terrifying deserts, nearly freeze in the mountains, and after a long journey they reach their destination. Umbopa turns out to be a king, and he wins the villainous King Twala, who dies in the combat with Curtis. The adventurers find Solomon's mines, but are left to die in an underground vault by Gagool, the horrific witch doctor. After an escape they find Curtis's brother and return to the civilization.

For further reading: The Cloak that I Left by L.R. Haggard (1951); Rider Haggard: His Life and Works by M.N. Cohen (1960); Rider Haggard as Rural Reformer by P.B. Ellis (1976) Rider Haggard by P.B. Ellis (1978); Rider Haggard by D.S. Higgins (1983); Anima as Fate by C. Brunner (1986): Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire by W. Katz (1987) - SEE ALSO: Edgar Rice Burroughs.

CETYWAYO AND HIS WHITE NEIGHBOURS, (1882)
THE ANCIENT ALLAN, (1920)
SMITH AND THE PHARAOHS, (1920)
SHE AND ALLAN, (1921)
THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN, (1922)
WISDOM'S DAUGHTER, (1923)