H. Rider Haggard, Bain News Service photograph (c. 1905, Library of Congress). Source · Public domain
About H. Rider Haggard
Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was born in Norfolk, England, and at nineteen went to southern Africa on the staff of Sir Henry Bulwer, lieutenant-governor of Natal. He served in the Transvaal administration after its annexation in 1877, farmed ostriches in Natal, and returned to England in 1881, where he trained as a barrister. King Solomon's Mines (1885) made his name, followed by She and Allan Quatermain (both 1887) and dozens more romances. In later life he wrote on agriculture and rural England, served on royal commissions, and was knighted in 1912.
King Solomon's Mines is told by Allan Quatermain, an elephant hunter of Durban in Natal, who writes the story for his son Harry, a medical student in London. On a ship from Cape Town he meets Sir Henry Curtis, a huge, fair-bearded English baronet, and his friend Captain John Good, a retired naval officer with an eyeglass and false teeth.
