Episode 28 - She by H Rider Haggard

This week we’re She by H Rider Haggard

She is the quintessential story of British Adventure during the height of the nation’s imperialist empire. The story is written as a manuscript sent to an academic for later publication, the author another academic Holly. In the manuscript Holly recounts how he became the adopted father to Leo, the descendent of a long line of men whose destiny is to fulfill their vengeance on a sorceress in East Africa. Holly, Leo, and their manservant Job sail to discover more about this sorceress and fulfill the quest left by Leo’s father. They are faced with many trials. After being shipwrecked and forced to travel up a river with the super cool British airtight river boat, they are captured by the Amahagger people, but are informed that “She who must be obeyed” has ordered that any white man captured must remain unharmed (which turned out poorly for their Mohamadin traveling companion, the captain of their shipwrecked transport). It is revealed that Leo is the descendent of Kallikrates, the lover that She had fallen for two millennia ago. Will Holly and Leo escape the grasp of the immortal and captivating She? Read the book and find out!

H Rider Haggard was the author of many light Victorian adventure novels such as She, his most famous being King Solomon’s Mine. After a brief stint as a colonial bureaucrat in South Africa, he returned to England in 1882 and wrote several unsuccessful novels until King Solomon’s Mine, which he wisely took the 10% royalties on rather than the 100 pound upfront payment. He was an advocate for agricultural reform throughout the empire and a hard critic of Bolshevism later in his life, developing a friendship over his opposition to Bolshevism with Rudyard Kipling. He died in 1925.