King Solomon's Mines

This premium quality edition includes the complete text of H. Rider Haggard's classic tale of the adventures of Allan Quatermain and his companions in a freshly edited and newly typeset edition.

With a generous 6''x9'' page size, this Summit Classic Press edition is printed on heavyweight bright white paper with a fully laminated cover featuring an original full color design. Page headers and proper placement of footnotes exemplify the attention to detail given this volume.

When ''King Solomon's Mines'' was first published in 1885 it quickly became the best selling book of the year with the publisher working feverishly to print copies fast enough to meet demand. Ironically the book, which was written in less than four months and perhaps in as little as six weeks, had been rejected by numerous publishers who believed its novelty left it completely lacking commercial viability.

Indeed, the novel was both the first example of what became the popular ''lost world'' literary genre and the first English adventure novel set in Africa. The use of the first person subjective viewpoint and a narrative composed in familiar conversational style was also a radical departure from the ornate language and omniscient viewpoint of the books of the day, many of which were obsessively focused on social class in England.

The basic outline of the tale has become a staple for adventure fiction, telling of the search, through an unexplored region of Africa, for the lost brother of Sir Henry Curtis. Curtis and his companion, Captain Good, first search out Allan ''Hunter'' Quatermain, an old hand at African big-game hunting who agrees to lead the expedition despite his conviction that they will likely never return. Upon realizing that Curtis' brother was searching for the lost mines of the biblical King Solomon, Quatermain produces a crude map, in which he never put much credence, and a letter supposedly written by a Potuguese explorer claiming to have found the fabulous diamond mines. The expedition is joined by the mysterious Umbopa, a native who seems out of place as a servant but is anxious to go along. Ultimately they reach the fabled destination, only to discover a lost civilization and see Umbopa's secret revealed.

Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) wrote ''King Solomon's Mines'' on a bet, a five shilling wager with his brother that he could write a story ''half as good'' as ''Treasure Island''. Haggard had traveled extensively in Africa as a minor government staff official during the Zulu and Boer Wars, and the Allan Quatermain character was based in large part on the colorful adventurers he encountered there. Other elements of the story were influenced by the discovery of the diamond fields and the ruins of ancient civilizations occurring around that time. Returning to England, Haggard married and became a member of the bar, but soon took up writing full time.

''King Solomon's Mines'' was remarkable not only for its originality but for Haggard's attitude toward native Africans. Unusual for writers in the colonial era, Haggard declared that many Africans were more noble and admirable than many of the Europeans who arrived in Africa, and his novels include complex and heroic native characters as well as evil and barbaric natives. ''King Solomon's Mines'' includes an interracial romance to which Quatermain has no objection, but which he tries to discourage because of how it will be received when Captain Good returns to England.

Haggard penned several popular novels while traveling to various parts of the Empire in the cause of land reform and, like many Victorians, dabbled in spiritualism and the paranormal. Haggard's most enduring characters, Allan Quatermain and Ayesha, were brought together in ''She and Allan'', Haggard's last major work.

The sequel to this title, ''Allan Quatermain'' is also available from Summit Classic Press in a handsome companion edition (ISBN 978-1480038905).