The Ghost Kings is a 1908 mystery-adventure novel by H Rider Haggard, set on the borders of Zululand in Africa. "Farewell, thou mighty one, under whose shade I, and the queens of my race before me, have dreamed for centuries. Thou art fallen beneath the stroke of Heaven, and great was thy fall, and I am fallen with thee. Save me from the Red Death, O Spirit of my tree, that in the land of ghosts I still may sleep beneath thy shade for ever."
King Solomon's Mines is a popular novel by the Victorian adventure writer and fabulist, Sir H. Rider Haggard. It tells of a quest into an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain in search of the missing brother of one of the party. It is significant as the first English fictional adventure novel set in Africa, and is considered the genesis of the Lost World literary genre.
The Way of the Spirit is a story of love, pain, the supernatural, and a love that survives the grave. "The woman, Clara, Lady Devene, was physically magnificent; tall, with a regal-looking head, richly coloured, ivory-skinned, perfectly developed in every part, except perhaps her brain. Good-natured, courageous after a fashion, well-meaning, affectionate, tenacious of what she had learned in youth..."
The story takes place against the real life struggle between Cetshwayo and Umbelazi, the two sons of the Zulu king Mpande. The events culminate in the Battle of Ndondakusuka in 1856. Real life people such as Panda, Cetshwayo, and John Robert Dunn appear as characters.
Jess is a novel by H. Rider Haggard set in South Africa. The book is named after Jess, one of the two orphaned nieces of a farmer in the Transvaal. "What if she should learn to love this man, and teach him to love her? To most women such a thought more or less involves the idea of marriage, and that change of status which for the most part they consider desirable ..."
Moon of Israel is a novel by Rider Haggard, first published in 1918 by John Murray. The novel narrates the events of the Biblical Exodus from Egypt told from the perspective of a scribe named Ana.
Finished is a 1917 novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring Allan Quatermain. It is the last in a trilogy about the Zulu kingdom, which also includes Marie and Child of Storm, and involved the dwarf Zikali. It is set against the background of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, covering events leading up to the war, and ending with the death of Cetewayo. Quatermain is depicted as being one of the few survivors of the Battle of Isandhlwana. Like others in the series, several real-life characters appear, such as Cetewayo and Anthony Durnford.
Most of you will have heard that Allan Quatermain, who was one of the party that discovered King Solomon's mines some little time ago, and who afterwards came to live in England near his friend Sir Henry Curtis. He went back to the wilderness again, as these old hunters almost invariably do, on one pretext or another. 1] They cannot endure civilization for very long, its noise and racket and the omnipresence of broad-clothed humanity proving more trying to their nerves than the dangers of the desert. I think that they feel lonely here, for it is a fact that is too little understood, though it has often been stated, that there is no loneliness like the loneliness of crowds, especially to those who are unaccustomed to them. "What is there in the world," old Quatermain would say, "so desolate as to stand in the streets of a great city and listen to the footsteps falling, falling, multitudinous as the rain, and watch the white line of faces as they hurry past, you know not whence, you know not whither? They come and go, their eyes meet yours with a cold stare, for a moment their features are written on your mind, and then they are gone for ever.
My Dear Macumazahn, It was your native name which I borrowed at the christening of that Allen who has become as well known to me as any other friend I have. It is therefore fitting that I should dedicate to you this, his last tale-the story of his wife, and the history of some further adventures which befell him. They will remind you of many an African yarn-that with the baboons may recall an experience of your own which I did not share. And perhaps they will do more than this. Perhaps they will bring back to you some of the long past romance of days that are lost to us. The country of which Allan Quatermain tells his tale is now, for the most part, as well known and explored as are the fields of Norfolk. Where we shot and trekked and galloped, scarcely seeing the face of civilized man, there the gold-seeker builds his cities.
This book, although it can be read as a separate story, is the third of the trilogy of which Marie and Child of Storm are the first two parts. It narrates, through the mouth of Allan Quatermain, the consummation of the vengeance of the wizard Zikali, alias The Opener of Roads, or "The-Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born," upon the royal Zulu House of which Senzangacona was the founder and Cetewayo, our enemy in the war of 1879, the last representative who ruled as a king. Although, of course, much is added for the purposes of romance, the main facts of history have been adhered to with some faithfulness. With these the author became acquainted a full generation ago, Fortune having given him a part in the events that preceded the Zulu War. Indeed he believes that with the exception of Colonel Phillips, who, as a lieutenant, commanded the famous escort of twenty-five policemen, he is now the last survivor of the party who, under the leadership of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, or Sompesu as the natives called him from the Zambesi to the Cape, were concerned in the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877.
Sir Henry Curtis, as everybody acquainted with him knows, is one of the most hospitable men on earth. It was in the course of the enjoyment of his hospitality at his place in Yorkshire the other day that I heard the hunting story which I am now about to transcribe. Many of those who read it will no doubt have heard some of the strange rumours that are flying about to the effect that Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain Good, R.N., recently found a vast treasure of diamonds out in the heart of Africa, supposed to have been hidden by the Egyptians, or King Solomon, or some other antique people. I first saw the matter alluded to in a paragraph in one of the society papers the day before I started for Yorkshire to pay my visit to Curtis, and arrived, needless to say, burning with curiosity; for there is something very fascinating to the mind in the idea of hidden treasure. When I reached the Hall, I at once asked Curtis about it, and he did not deny the truth of the story; but on my pressing him to tell it he would not, nor would Captain Good, who was also staying in the house.
DEDICATION This faithful but unpretending record of a remarkable adventure is hereby respectfully dedicated by the narrator, ALLAN QUATERMAIN, to all the big and little boys who read it. AUTHOR'S NOTE The author ventures to take this opportunity to thank his readers for the kind reception they have accorded to the successive editions of this tale during the last twelve years. He hopes that in its present form it will fall into the hands of an even wider public, and that in years to come it may continue to afford amusement to those who are still young enough at heart to love a story of treasure, war, and wild adventure. Ditchingham, 11 March, 1898. POST SCRIPTUM Now, in 1907, on the occasion of the issue of this edition, I can only add how glad I am that my romance should continue to please so many readers.
One day-it was about a week after Allan Quatermain told me his story of the "Three Lions," and of the moving death of Jim-Jim-he and I were walking home together on the termination of a day's shooting. He owned about two thousand acres of shooting round the place he had bought in Yorkshire, over a hundred of which were wood. It was the second year of his occupation of the estate, and already he had reared a very fair head of pheasants, for he was an all-round sportsman, and as fond of shooting with a shot-gun as with an eight-bore rifle. We were three guns that day, Sir Henry Curtis, Old Quatermain, and myself; but Sir Henry was obliged to leave in the middle of the afternoon in order to meet his agent, and inspect an outlying farm where a new shed was wanted. However, he was coming back to dinner, and going to bring Captain Good with him, for Brayley Hall was not more than two miles from the Grange. We had met with very fair sport, considering that we were only going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney, which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a pheasant or two as well. "Well, what do you say?" said old Quatermain, "shall we beat through this for a finish?"
Ditchingham, 1912. My dear Sir Henry, - Nearly thirty-seven years have gone by, more than a generation, since first we saw the shores of Southern Africa rising from the sea. Since then how much has happened: the Annexation of the Transvaal, the Zulu War, the first Boer War, the discovery of the Rand, the taking of Rhodesia, the second Boer War, and many other matters which in these quick-moving times are now reckoned as ancient history. Alas I fear that were we to re-visit that country we should find but few faces which we knew. Yet of one thing we may be glad. Those historical events, in some of which you, as the ruler of Natal, played a great part, and I, as it chanced, a smaller one, so far as we can foresee, have at length brought a period of peace to Southern Africa. To-day the flag of England flies from the Zambesi to the Cape.
Child of Storm is a 1913 novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring Allan Quatermain. The plot is set in 1854-56 and concerns Quatermain hunting in Zululand and getting involved with Mameema, a beautiful African girl who causes great turmoil in the Zulu kingdom. The novel is the second in a trilogy by Haggard involving the collapse of the Zulu kingdom and featuring the dwarf Zikali. The first book is Marie, and the third, Finished. The story takes place against the real life struggle between Cetshwayo and Umbelazi, the two sons of the Zulu king Mpande (called "Panda" in the novel). The events culminate in the Battle of Ndondakusuka (here called the "Battle of the Tugela") in 1856. Real life people such as Panda, Cetshwayo, and John Robert Dunn appear as characters.
Now I, Allan Quatermain, come to the story of what was, perhaps, one of the strangest of all the adventures which have befallen me in the course of a life that so far can scarcely be called tame or humdrum. Amongst many other things it tells of the war against the Black Kendah people and the dead of Jana, their elephant god. Often since then I have wondered if this creature was or was not anything more than a mere gigantic beast of the forest. It seems improbable, even impossible, but the reader of future days may judge of this matter for himself. Also he can form his opinion as to the religion of the White Kendah and their pretensions to a certain degree of magical skill. Of this magic I will make only one remark: If it existed at all, it was by no means infallible. To take a single instance, Har t and Mar t were convinced by divination that I, and I only, could kill Jana, which was why they invited me to Kendahland. Yet in the end it was Hans who killed him.
Who that has ever seen them can forget the ruins of Blossholme Abbey, set upon their mount between the great waters of the tidal estuary to the north, the rich lands and grazing marshes that, backed with woods, border it east and south, and to the west by the rolling uplands, merging at last into purple moor, and, far away, the sombre eternal hills Probably the scene has not changed very much since the days of Henry VIII, when those things happened of which we have to tell, for here no large town has arisen, nor have mines been dug or factories built to affront the earth and defile the air with their hideousness and smoke. The village of Blossholme we know has scarcely varied in its population, for the old records tell us this, and as there is no railway here its aspect must be much the same. Houses built of the local grey stone do not readily fall down. The folk of that generation walked in and out of the doorways of many of them, although the roofs for the most part are now covered with tiles or rough slates in place of reeds from the dike.
"Ultimately a good hare was found which took the field at ... There the hounds pressed her, and on the hunt arriving at the edge of the cliff the hare could be seen crossing the beach and going right out to sea. A boat was procured, and the master and some others rowed out to her just as she drowned, and, bringing the body in, gave it to the hounds. A hare swimming out to sea is a sight not often witnessed."-Local paper, January 1911. "... A long check occurred in the latter part of this hunt, the hare having laid up in a hedgerow, from which she was at last evicted by a crack of the whip. Her next place of refuge was a horse-pond, which she tried to swim, but got stuck in the ice midway, and was sinking, when the huntsman went in after her. It was a novel sight to see huntsman and hare being lifted over a wall out of the pond, the eager pack waiting for their prey behind the wall."-Local paper, February 1911.
Ditchingham, 1918. MY DEAR CURZON, More than thirty years ago you tried to protect me, then a stranger to you, from one of the falsest and most malignant accusations ever made against a writer. So complete was your exposure of the methods of those at work to blacken a person whom they knew to be innocent, that, as you will remember, they refused to publish your analysis which destroyed their charges and, incidentally, revealed their motives. Although for this reason vindication came otherwise, your kindness is one that I have never forgotten, since, whatever the immediate issue of any effort, in the end it is the intention that avails. Therefore in gratitude and memory I ask you to accept this romance, as I know that you do not disdain the study of romance in the intervals of your Imperial work. The application of its parable to our state and possibilities- beneath or beyond these glimpses of the moon-I leave to your discernment. Believe me, Ever sincerely yours, H. RIDER HAGGARD.
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 the Reverend H.J. Graham but, unlike his older brothers who graduated from various Public Schools, he ended up attending Ipswich Grammar School.
