Haggard, Henry Rider

Haggard, Henry Rider, novelist, was born of a good Norfolk family at Bradenham Hall, June 22, 1856, and was educated at Ipswich grammar-school. He went out to Natal in 1875 as secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, and next year accompanied Sir Theophilus Shepstone to the Transvaal, where he served until 1879, when he returned to England to marry and settle down to a literary life. His first book, Cetewayo and his White Neighbours (1882), pleased the Cape politicians, but attracted no attention elsewhere. It was in a new kind of fiction that he was to make his successes. However, his Dawn (1884) and The Witch's Head (1885) were only successful after the immediate, extraordinary, and not undeserved popularity of King Solomon's Mines (1885). This was too quickly followed by She (1887), Jess (1887), Allan Quatermain (1887), Maiwa's Revenge (1888), Mr Mceson's Will (1888), Cleopatra (1889), Allan's Wife (1890), Nada the Lily, Eric, Montezuma's Daughter, Joan Haste, &c. Haggard has fertile invention, vigour, and novelty enough, but not the rare faculty of making things seem true; while his style is crude and lacks in distinction, his grasp of character is feeble. His fights indeed are powerful but not Homeric, and reek with needless blood and artificial gruesome- ness; his pages are bright with vivid but somewhat garish African colours. His chief merit is his readability; his greatest praise his phenomenal success; for with all his gifts he is still but little of the artist, and hardly to be taken seriously as a novelist.