King Solomon's Mines (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Twosh. King Solomon’s Treasures, John De Morgan’s American parody, also appeared in 1887 (New York: N. L. Munro). These and other parodies were reprinted in King Solomon’s Children (New York: Arno Press, 1978). Their existence is evidence of the strong and immediate impact of King Solomon’s Mines on readers on two continents and beyond.

After King Solomon’s Mines
    Haggard quickly found himself a genuine literary celebrity after the success of King Solomon’s Mines. He hobnobbed with other literary personalities in London, attending tea parties and dinners at the home of the English poet, author, and critic Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849-1928). A preserved guest book attests that at one such gathering, Haggard rubbed elbows with such literary immortals as Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Walter Pater, and Robert Bridges. At another event at the Gosse home, Haggard was a guest alongside Sir Max Beerbohm, Aubrey Beardsley, and the painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema.
    Haggard did not permit his renown to interfere with his productivity, and he churned out a series of bestsellers. A partial list of novels he subsequently published includes She (1887), Jess (1887), Allan Quatermain (1887), A Tale of Three Lions (1887), Mr. Meeson’s Will (1888), Maiwa’s Revenge (1888), My Fellow Labourer and the Wreck of the Copeland (1888), Colonel Quaritch, V.C. (1888), Allan’s Wife (1889), Beatrice (1890), Eric Brighteyes (1891), Nada the Lily (1892), Montezuma’s Daughter (1893), The People of the Mist (1894), Joan Haste (1895), Heart of the World (1895), The Wizard (1896), Doctor Therne (1898), The Spring of Lion (1899), Lysbeth (1901), Pearl-Maiden (1903), Stella Fregelius (1904), Ayesha: The Return of She (1905), Benita: An African Romance (1906), Fair Margaret (1907), The Ghost Kings (1908), The Yellow God (1909), The Lady of Blossholme (1909), and Queen Sheba’s Ring (1909).
    Despite his continued activity, Haggard’s latter years were not joyful. His nine-year-old son Jock died in 1891, and Haggard’s ensuing depression led to permanent respiratory and digestive problems. In his memoir The Days of My Life Haggard admitted that his best novels were “among the first dozen or so” he wrote between King Solomon’s Mines and Montezuma’s Daughter. Haggard ascribes a falling off in quality of his output to the shock of his son’s death and his own subsequent bad health: “Although from necessity I went on with the writing of stories, and do so still, it has not been with the same zest. Active rather than imaginative life has appealed to me more.”
    Part of this active life was a careful study of farming conditions in Britain, which resulted in books like A Farmer’s Year (1899) and Rural England (1902), as mentioned earlier. In 1902 Haggard was asked to become a commissioner for the British government and report on agricultural labor colonies that had been established in the United States. On his return from America and Canada, he began to concentrate on such agricultural issues as soil erosion. He experimented successfully on his own estate, Kessingland Grange, situated beside the North Sea. Joining the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion and Afforestation, he was also active in helping the Salvation Army and its founder, General William Booth (1829-1912). Bad health after 1909 slowed him down, despite the honor of a knighthood, bestowed in 1912 for services to the British Empire, rather than for literary achievement. A sense of duty made Haggard accept membership on a six-person Royal Commission to visit the various dominions of the British Empire. Starting in 1912, this commission’s activities necessitated trips to Australia and Africa during which Haggard energetically gathered material for future books. As Haggard’s biographer Morton Cohen aptly puts it, “His holidays were inspection tours of the world.”
    No sooner had Haggard returned to England than he leapt into action to support England’s entry into World