Author: H. Rider Haggard

Publisher:

Published: 2020-03-15

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13:

Sir Henry Rider Haggard was born in Norfolk, England in 1856. His parents were wealthy landowners with both Jewish and Indian ancestors, a fact which may have contributed to Haggard's own more liberal views toward racial and religious differences. Alone among his brothers (Haggard was one of eight children), Haggard was not given a private school education. He took up the study of law, but soon dropped it in order to take a secretarial position for the governor of Natal in South Africa. He remained in Africa over five years, an experience which shows in many of his novels set on that so-called "Dark Continent."Haggard returned to England and completed his studies, but still could not interest himself in the legal profession. He married into a wealthy Norfolk family and planned to return to South Africa to live as a gentleman farmer, but the increasing chaos of the Zulu rebellion and Boer War made his wife unwilling to settle there.Rather than go into law full time, Haggard began writing. His first work was the three-volume work Dawn, followed by The Witch's Tale, his first novel to take advantage of his experiences in Africa. Then, according to legend, Haggard read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and bet his brother a shilling he could write a book as good or better. Within a year, Haggard had published King Solomon's Mines (1885) and become famous for one of the first "lost world" novels in the English language.