H. Rider Haggard

Q. Wasn't Haggard a bit of a poor-man's Rudyard Kipling

A. That has been said, though it is a little unfair. Haggard and Kipling were friends, and both wrote extensively and in a mythologising fashion about the cultures in which they, as Colonial Brits at large in the Empire, found themselves, so comparisons are inevitable. Kipling's star, while maybe not so bright as it once was - not least because aspects of what is known about his attitudes towards race don't really square with modern thinking - has remained high in the heavens; Haggard's was never quite as bright as his friend's and most today would be hard pressed to name anything he wrote other than King Solomon's Mines. But he's still there and is, in his own way, as important a writer as Kipling.

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Q. Why

A. Behind the all-action adventure that made his novels so popular there was often a depth unsuspected by more frivolous readers. Jung, in fact, suggested that Ayesha in She was a classic example of the anima, or female archetype.

He was also an agricultural reformer and an expert on agricultural and social conditions in England and on Colonial migration. His books on farming, such as The Farmer's Year Book and Rural England, were based on long journeys throughout the country and thoughtful research.

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Q. But we really know him as a novelist

A. Today, yes, and short-story writer. But his works on rural Britain were highly esteemed in their day, and it was for these rather than his fame as a novelist that he was knighted in 1912.

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Q. And a little more about his life

A. Sir Henry Rider Haggard was born in 1856, the sixth son of a Norfolk squire. Considered the dunce of the family by his father - and failing to get a commission in the army - he spent some years while still a young man in South Africa. It was on his return to Britain he became involved in various commissions associated with agriculture and emigration. It was at this time, too, that he began writing in earnest, albeit unsuccessfully, books both on farming and southern African history as well as novels.

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The book that made his name was King Solomon's Mines, which was published in 1886. Haggard made a fortune with this book but almost lost out, having initially accepted a mere �100 for the rights to the book but then, at the last moment, changing his mind and demanding a 10% royalty rate instead - a wise choice given that the book went on to sell upwards of 30,000 copies a year soon afterwards. He went on to write 34 adventure novels, whose subject matter was as varied as their exotic settings, which included Constantinople, Iceland, Mexico and Ancient Egypt as well as Africa, where his most successful stories were set.

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In 1919 he was created Knight Commander of the British Empire and he died in London in 1925.

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Q. What makes him stand out from his contemporaries, then

A. By our standards he would probably, at least on the surface, come across as a die-hard Victorian Englishman, for whom belief in Empire and the natural superiority of Europeans in general and the British in particular - along with his casual and unrepentant anti-Semitism - was as natural as breathing. However, he is known to have had an intense relationship with an African woman, which, quite�at odds with the rules of the day, went well beyond the sexual, while doing his first stint in South Africa and he made a point of learning about and writing appreciatively of non-European cultures, particularly that of the Zulus, among whom he had spent a great deal of time. Also, his work does show an unease about the great colonial adventure and an essential natural decency.

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He was acutely aware of the transience of all human endeavours, something which made him different from many other writers of his generation, who were resolute in their belief in scientific progress and the 'burden' carried by the white races in taking a leading role throughout the world. As his most enduring creation, Ayesha in She, says: 'The religions come and the religions pass, and civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature.' Very wise.

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Q. And the essential reading list

A. Cetywayo And His White Neighbours (1882); King Solomon's Mines (1885); She (1887); Allan Quatermain (1887); The World's Desire (1890); Montezuma's Daughter (1893); Church and State (1895); The Last Boer War (1899); Rural England (1902); Ayesha: The Return Of She (1905); A Gardener's Year (1905); Queen Sheba's Ring (1910); Moon Of Israel (1918); The Days Of My Life: An Autobiography By Sir H. Rider Haggard (1926)

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Q. Anything else

A. Numerous films based on his work have been made, including several versions of King Solomon's Mines and two fairly lacklustre adaptations of She. (The 1965 Hammer effort with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Ursula Andress as 'She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed' is a masterpiece of low camp, but doesn't really do justice to Haggard's tale - Bernard Cribbins was in it, for Heavens' sake.)

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However, dated though much of the material may seem, interest in his work endures. King Solomon's Mines has not been out of print since its first publication 117 years ago and in 2003 Allan Quatermain is back on the big screen in�The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen�starring Sean Connery, which might spark a revival of interest in some of the less well-known books.

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By Simon Smith