Henry Rider Haggard

Infobox Writer
name = Henry Rider Haggard


imagesize = 180px
birthdate = birth date|1856|6|22|df=y
birthplace = Bradenham, Norfolk, UK
deathdate = death date and age|1925|5|14|1856|6|22|df=y
deathplace = London, UK
occupation = Novelist, Scholar
nationality = British
period = 19th & 20th century
genre = Adventure, Fantasy, Fables, Romance, Sci-Fi, Historical
subject = Africa
influences = Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling
influenced = Edgar Rice Burroughs, C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Carl Jung, Joseph Conrad
website = http://www.riderhaggardsociety.org.uk

Sir Henry Rider Haggard KBE (22 June 1856 – 14 May 1925), was a prolific writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire. His stories, situated at the lighter end of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential to this day.

Biography

Henry Rider Haggard was born at Bradenham, Norfolk, to Sir William Meybohm Rider Haggard, a barrister, and Ella Doveton, an author and poet. He was the eighth of ten children. He was initially sent to Garsington Rectory in Oxfordshire to study under Reverend H. J. Graham, but unlike his older brothers who graduated from various public schools, he attended Ipswich Grammar School.cite book |last=Butts |first=Dennis |authorlink= |coauthors=H. Rider Haggard |editor=Dennis Butts |others= |title=King Solomon's Mines |origdate= |origyear=2006 |origmonth= |url= |format= |accessdate= |edition= |date= |year= |month= |publisher=Oxford University Press |location= |id= |doi= |pages=vii-xxviii |chapter=Introduction and Chronology |chapterurl= |quote = ] This was because fact|date=July 2008 his father, who perhaps regarded him as somebody who was not going to amount to much fact|date=July 2008, could no longer afford to maintain his expensive private education. After failing his army entrance exam he was sent to a private crammer in London to prepare for the entrance exam for the British Foreign Office,cite book |last=Butts |first=Dennis |authorlink= |coauthors=H. Rider Haggard |editor=Dennis Butts |others= |title=King Solomon's Mines |origdate= |origyear=2006 |origmonth= |url= |format= |accessdate= |edition= |date= |year= |month= |publisher=Oxford University Press |location= |id= |doi= |pages=vii-xxviii |chapter=Introduction and Chronology |chapterurl= |quote = ] for which he never sat.

Instead, Haggard's father sent himFact|date=January 2008 to what is now South Africa, in an unpaid position as assistant to the secretary to Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Natal . It was in this role that Haggard was present in Pretoria for the official announcement of the British annexation of the Boer Republic of the Transvaal. Indeed, Haggard raised the Union flag and read out much of the proclamation following the loss of voice of the official originally entrusted with the duty. [Pakenham, T. (1992) "The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876-1912", Avon Books, New York. ISBN-10 0380719991.]

At about that time, Haggard fell in love with Mary Elizabeth "Lilly" Jackson, whom he intended to marry once he obtained paid employment in Africa. In 1878 he became Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal, and wrote to his father informing him that he intended to return to England and marry her. His father forbade it until Haggard had made a career for himself, and by 1879 Jackson had married Frank Archer, a well-to-do banker. When Haggard eventually returned to England, he married a friend of his sister, Mariana Louisa Margitson, and the couple travelled to Africa together. They had a son named Jock (who died of measles at age 10) and three daughters, Angela, Dorothy and Lilias. Lilias became an author, edited "The Rabbit Skin Cap", and wrote a biography of her father entitled "The Cloak That I Left".

Moving back to England in 1882, the couple settled in Ditchingham, Norfolk, Louisa's ancestral home. Later they lived in Kessingland and had connections with the church in Bungay, Suffolk. Haggard turned to the study of law and was called to the bar in 1884. His practice of law was somewhat desultory, and much of his time was taken up by the writing of novels, which he saw as being more profitable. Rider Haggard lived at 69 Gunterstone Road in Hammersmith, London, from mid 1885 to circa April 1888. It was at this Hammersmith address that he completed "King Solomon's Mines" (published September 1885) [Ed. Dorothy Eagles and Hilary Carnell 1978 "The Oxford Literary Guide to the British Isles", Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 869123 8 p188] . Heavily influenced by the larger-than-life adventurers he met in Colonial Africa (most notably Frederick Selous and Frederick Russell Burnham), the great mineral wealth discovered in Africa, and the ruins of ancient lost civilizations in Africa, such as Great Zimbabwe, Haggard created his Allan Quatermain adventures.cite journal |quotes= |last=Mandiringana |first=E. |authorlink= |coauthors=T. J. Stapleton |year=1998 |month= |title=The Literary Legacy of Frederick Courteney Selous |journal=History in Africa |volume=25 |issue= |pages=199–218 |doi=10.2307/3172188 |url= |accessdate= ] cite web |url=http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=s&p=l&a=c&ID=1144&o= |title=Theodore Roosevelt, Chapter XI: The Lion Hunter |accessdate=2006-12-18 |last=Pearson |first=Edmund Lester |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |year= |month= |format=HTML |work= |publisher=Humanities Web |pages= |archiveurl= |archivedate= |quote= ] Three of his books, "The Wizard" (1896), "Elissa; the doom of Zimbabwe" (1899), and "Black Heart and White Heart; a Zulu idyll" (1900), are dedicated to Burnham's daughter, Nada, the first white child born in Bulawayo; she had been named after Haggard's 1892 book "Nada the Lily".cite book |last=Haggard |first=H. Rider |authorlink=H. Rider Haggard |coauthors= |editor= |others= |title=The Days of My Life Volume II |origdate= |origyear=1926 |origmonth= |url=http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300141.txt |format=txt |accessdate=2006-12-17 |edition= |date= |year= |month= |publisher= |location= |id= |doi = |pages= |chapter= |chapterurl= |quote = ]

Years later,Fact|date=January 2008 when Haggard was a successful novelist, he was contacted by his former love, Lilly Archer, née Jackson. She had been deserted by her husband, who had embezzled funds entrusted to him and fled, bankrupt, to Africa. Lilly was penniless, and so Haggard installed her and her sons in a house and saw to the children's education. Lilly eventually followed her husband to Africa, where he infected her with syphilis before dying of it himself. Lilly returned to England in late 1907, where Haggard again supported her until her death on 22 April, 1909. These details were not generally known until the publication of Haggard's 1983 biography by D. S. Higgins.

Haggard was heavily involved in reforming agriculture and was a member of many commissions on land use and related affairs, work that involved several trips to the Colonies and Dominions. He was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for parliament as a candidate for the Conservative Party in the 1895 summer election, losing by only 198 votes.

Writing career

Haggard is most famous as the author of the novels "King Solomon's Mines" and its sequel "Allan Quatermain", and "She" and its sequel "Ayesha", all swashbuckling adventure novels set in the context of the Scramble for Africa. He is also remembered for the epic Viking romance, "Eric Brighteyes".

While his novels portray many of the stereotypes associated with colonialism, they are unusual for the degree of sympathy with which he often treats the native populations. Africans often serve heroic roles in his novels, although the protagonists are typically, though not invariably, European. A notable example is Ignosi, the rightful king of Kukuanaland, in "King Solomon's Mines". Having developed an intense mutual friendship with the three Englishmen who help him reclaim his throne, he accepts their advice and abolishes witch-hunts and arbitrary capital punishment.

Haggard also wrote about agricultural and social issues reform, in part inspired by his experiences in Africa, but also based on what he saw in Europe. At the end of his life he was a staunch opponent of Bolshevism, a position he shared with his friend Rudyard Kipling. The two had bonded upon Kipling's arrival at London in 1889 largely on the strength of their shared opinions, and the two remained lifelong friends.

Reputation and legacy

Haggard's stories are still widely read today. Ayesha, the female protagonist of "She", has been cited as a prototype by psychoanalysts as different as Sigmund Freud (in "The Interpretation of Dreams") and Carl Jung. Her epithet "She Who Must Be Obeyed" is used by British author John Mortimer in his "Rumpole of the Bailey" series as the private name the lead character, a barrister with some skill in court, uses for his wife, Hilda, before whom he trembles at home. Haggard's Lost World genre influenced the popular American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs.Fact|date=January 2008 Allan Quatermain, the hero of "King Solomon's Mines" and its sequel "Allan Quatermain", has influenced the American film character Indiana Jones, featured in the films "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Temple of Doom" and "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".Fact|date=January 2008 Quatermain has gained recent popularity thanks to being a main character in the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".

Haggard was praised in 1965 by Roger Lancelyn Green, one of the Oxford Inklings, as a writer of a consistently high level of "literary skill or sheer imaginative power" and a co-originator with Robert Louis Stevenson of the Age of the Story Tellers [from the introduction to the 1965 Everyman's Library edition of the one-volume "The Prisoner of Zenda" and "Rupert of Hentzau" by Anthony Hope] .

Chronology of works

*gutenberg|no=8667|name=Cetywayo and his White Neighbours; Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal (1882)
*gutenberg|no=10892|name=Dawn (1884)
* "The Witch's Head" (1884)
*"King Solomon's Mines" (1885); gutenberg|no=2166|name=online version
*gutenberg|no=2728|name=Hunter Quatermain's Story (1885)
*gutenberg|no=1918|name=Long Odds (1886)
*"She" (1887); gutenberg|no=3155|name=online version
*gutenberg|no=5898|name=Jess (1887)
*gutenberg|no=711|name=Allan Quatermain (1887)
*gutenberg|no=2729|name=A Tale of Three Lions (1887)
*gutenberg|no=11913|name=Mr. Meeson's Will (1888)
*gutenberg|no=2713|name=Maiwa's Revenge (1888)
* "My Fellow Laborer and the Wreck of the Copeland" (1888)
*gutenberg|no=11882|name=Colonel Quaritch, V.C. (1888)
*"Cleopatra" (1889); gutenberg|no=2769|name=online version
*gutenberg|no=2727|name=Allan's Wife (1889)
*gutenberg|no=3096|name=Beatrice (1890)
*"The World's Desire" (1890); co-written with Andrew Lang gutenberg|no=2763|name=online version
*"Eric Brighteyes" (1891); gutenberg|no=2721|name=online version
*"Nada the Lily" (1892); gutenberg|no=1207|name=online version)
*"Montezuma's Daughter" (1893); gutenberg|no=1848|name=online version
*"The People of the Mist" (1894); gutenberg|no=6769|name=online version
*"Joan Haste" (1895)
*"Heart of the World" (1895)
*"Church and State" (1895)
*gutenberg|no=2893|name=The Wizard (1896)
*gutenberg|no=5764|name=Doctor Therne (1898)
*gutenberg|no=4074|name=Swallow (1898)
* "A Farmer's Year" (1899)
* "The Last Boer War" (1899)
* "The Spring of Lion" (1899)
*gutenberg|no=1848|name=Montezuma's Daughter (1899)
*gutenberg|no=2855|name=Elissa; the doom of Zimbabwe (1899)
*gutenberg|no=2842|name=Black Heart and White Heart; a Zulu idyll (1900)
* "The New South Africa" (1900)
* "A Winter Pilgrimage" (1901)
*gutenberg|no=5754|name=Lysbeth (1901)
* "Rural England" (1902)
*gutenberg|no=5175|name=Pearl Maiden (1903)
*gutenberg|no=6051|name=Stella Fregelius (1904)
*gutenberg|no=2762|name=Brethren (1904)
* "The Poor and the Land" (1905)
* "" (1905); gutenberg|no=5228|name=online version
* "A Gardener's Year" (1905)
* "Report of Salvation Army Colonies" (1905)
* "The Way of the Spirit" (1906)
*gutenberg|no=2761|name=Benita (1906)
*gutenberg|no=9780|name=Fair Margaret (1907)
*gutenberg|no=8184|name=The Ghost Kings (1908)
*gutenberg|no=2857|name=The Yellow God (1908)
*gutenberg|no=3813|name=The Lady of Blossholme (1909)
*gutenberg|no=2602|name=Queen Sheba's Ring (1910)
*gutenberg|no=13434|name=Regeneration: An account of the social work of the Salvation Army (1910)
*gutenberg|no=2722|name=Morning Star(1910)
*gutenberg|no=3094|name=Red Eve (1911)
*gutenberg|no=2764|name=The Mahatma and the Hare (1911)
* "Rural Denmark" (1911)
*gutenberg|no=1690|name=Marie (1912)
*gutenberg|no=1711|name=Child of Storm (1913)
*gutenberg|no=3097|name=The Wanderer's Necklace (1914)
* "A call to Arms" (1914)
*gutenberg|no=5174|name=Allan and The Holy Flower (1915)
* "After the War Settlement and Employment of Ex-Service Men" (1916)
*gutenberg|no=2841|name=The Ivory Child (1916)
*gutenberg|no=1724|name=Finished (1917)
*gutenberg|no=3709|name=Love Eternal (1918)
*gutenberg|no=2856|name=Moon of Israel (1918)
*gutenberg|no=1368|name=When the World Shook (1919)
*gutenberg|no=5746|name=The Ancient Allan (1920)
*gutenberg|no=6073|name=Smith and the Pharaohs (1920)
* "She and Allan" (1921); gutenberg|no=5745|name=online version
*gutenberg|no=3153|name=The Virgin of the Sun (1922)
* "Wisdom's Daughter" (1923)
* "Heu-Heu" (1924)
* "Queen of the Dawn" (1925)
* "The Days of my Life: An autobiography of Sir H. Rider Haggard" (1926)
* "Treasure of the Lake" (1926)
* "Allan and the Ice Gods" (1927)
* "Mary of Marion Isle" (1929)
* "Belshazzar" (1930)

Publication dates unknown
*gutenberg|no=1980|name=Stories by English Authors (as contributor)

Allan Quatermain series

* "King Solomon's Mines"; gutenberg|no=2166|name=online version
*gutenberg|no=711|name=Allan Quatermain
* "Allan's Wife & Other Tales"; gutenberg|no=2727|name=online version
*gutenberg|no=2713|name=Maiwa's Revenge: or, The War of the Little Hand
*gutenberg|no=1690|name=Marie
*gutenberg|no=1711|name=Child of Storm
*gutenberg|no=5174|name=Allan and The Holy Flower
*gutenberg|no=1724|name=Finished
*gutenberg|no=2841|name=The Ivory Child
*gutenberg|no=5746|name=The Ancient Allan
* "She and Allan"; gutenberg|no=5745|name=online version
* "Heu-heu: or The Monster"
* "The Treasure of the Lake"
* "Allan and the Ice-gods"
* "Magapa the Buck
* "A Tale Of Three lions
* "Hunter Quatermain's Story
* "Long Odds

Ayesha series

* "She"; (gutenberg|no=3155|name=online version)
* ""; gutenberg|no=5228|name=online version
* "She and Allan"; gutenberg|no=5745|name=online version
* "Wisdom's Daughter: The Life and Love Story of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed"

ee also

* Mythopoeia (genre)
* Louis Henri Boussenard
* Alexandre Dumas, père
* Karl May
* Baroness Orczy
* Emilio Salgari
* Samuel Shellabarger
* Lawrence Schoonover
* Jules Verne, author of many early works of science fiction
* Frank Yerby
* A. E. W. Mason
* P. C. Wren
* Anthony Hope, author of adventure novels such as "The Prisoner of Zenda"

References

External links

*
* [http://www.riderhaggardsociety.org.uk/ Rider Haggard Society]
* H. Rider Haggard's [http://www.archive.org/download/otr_escape/esca_19480711_She.mp3 She] , Escape, CBS radio, 1948
*
* [http://www.gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html#letterH Works at Project Gutenberg Australia]
* [http://www.litquotes.com/quote_author_resp.php?AName=H.%20Rider%20Haggard H. Rider Haggard Quotation Collection]

Persondata
NAME = Haggard, Henry Rider
ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Haggard, Rider
SHORT DESCRIPTION = English novelist, scholar
DATE OF BIRTH = June 22, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH = Norfolk, England
DATE OF DEATH = May 14, 1925
PLACE OF DEATH =