Böcker av Sir H Rider Haggard

During his years in Africa, it's said Haggard came to know and appreciate Zulu culture -- intimately, as it were. It's said he had an affair with an African woman and not just any sort of an affair, but the sort of affair that makes men mutter in retrospect about profound relationships. That's the tale they tell on Haggard: that affair changed his portrayal of women. Even the psychologists got in on the act -- really, psychologists! Just ask Carl Jung, who used Haggard's She to exemplify anima. Or not. Read these stories, we say, and see for yourself.

"In the historical romance The Virgin of the Sun, the Englishman Hubert de Hastings travels to Peru during the fourteenth-century. There he witnesses Incan civilization, tours Machu Picchu and falls in love with the Incan princess Quilla. Haggard had invented the plot of VS in 1891 as an alternative to the one used in Montezuma's Daughter." -visualhaggard.org

This collection of short stories includes three which feature Allan Quatermain, the hero of King Solomon's Mines and other classic novels ("Long Odds," "Hunter Quatermain's Story," and "A Tale of Three Lions") as well as two bonus stories ("The Mahatma and the Hare," "Black Heart and White Heart").

If Haggard -- one of the greatest adventure writers of all time -- is remembered now, it is for his novels featuring Allan Quatermain, a heroic adventurer whose exploits in Africa form the most important sequence of Haggard's books. Quatermain's adventures are chronicled in such novels as "King Solomon's Mines," "Allan Quaterman," "She," and 11 others. However, despite the importance of the Quaterman books, many of Haggard's other novels are interesting in their own right. "Nada the Lily" is the first of four books about the Zulus, all of which are excellent. "Eric Brighteyes" is rich, fantasy-laden Icelandic saga. "The World's Desire" (written with Andrew Lang) is a fantasy about the characters in "The Odyssey." And there are numerous other titles (many of them reprinted by Wildside Press as part of the Wildside Fantasy Classics series) which bring undeservingly lost Haggard books back into print. "Mr. Meeson's Will" is just such a book. Here we get a glimpse of what H. Rider Haggard must have gone through as a starting author, as he slyly takes the reader inside the British publishing industry, where greed and hack writers (he calls them "tame writers") are prominent. One can easily see how writers of the day could be ruined by publishers as ruthless and unscrupulous as Mr. Meeson. Luckily Haggard could call upon his years of legal training in search of the appropriate remedy for his heroine's tragic plight!

Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard is a classic Viking saga set in medieval Iceland. The novel follows the heroic yet tragic life of Eric, a bold and honorable warrior, as he navigates love, betrayal, and the challenges of fate. Eric is torn between his love for two women, Gudruda the Fair and Swanhild the Witch, while also facing dangerous enemies and harsh environments. Rich with Norse mythology and legendary adventure, this novel is one of Haggard's most gripping tales of love, loyalty, and destiny.

This collection of short stories includes three which feature Allan Quatermain, the hero of King Solomon's Mines and other classic novels ("Long Odds," "Hunter Quatermain's Story," and "A Tale of Three Lions") as well as two bonus stories ("The Mahatma and the Hare," "Black Heart and White Heart").

"Standing a while ago upon the flower-clad plain above Tiberius, by the Lake of Galilee, the writer gazed at the double peaks of the Hill of Hattin. Here, or so tradition says, Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount--that perfect rule of gentleness and peace. Here, too--and this is certain--after nearly twelve centuries had gone by, Yusuf Salah-ed-din, whom we know as the Sultan Saladin, crushed the Christian power in Palestine in perhaps the most terrible battle which that land of blood has known. Thus the Mount of the Beatitudes became the Mount of Massacre. Whilst musing on these strangely-contrasted scenes enacted in one place there arose in his mind a desire to weave, as best he might, a tale wherein any who are drawn to the romance of that pregnant and mysterious epoch, when men by thousands were glad to lay down their lives for visions and spiritual hopes, could find a picture, however faint and broken, of the long war between Cross and Crescent waged among the Syrian plains and deserts. Of Christian knights and ladies also, and their loves and sufferings in England and the East; of the fearful lord of the Assassins whom the Franks called Old Man of the Mountain, and his fortress city, Masyaf. Of the great-hearted, if at times cruel Saladin and his fierce Saracens; of the rout at Hattin itself, on whose rocky height the Holy Rood was set up as a standard and captured, to be seen no more by Christian eyes; and of the Iast surrender, whereby the Crusaders lost Jerusalem forever. Of that desire this story is the fruit." -- H. Rider Haggard