H. Rider Haggard: Major REH Influence, Classic Author

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Yesterday was Sir Henry Rider Haggard's 161st birthday.  Haggard was a major influence on REH, but that is merely scratching the surface.  Haggard was an influence on most of Howard's major literary influences. Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sax Rohmer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Harold Lamb, Talbot Mundy, A. Merritt, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith -- all admired HRH.

Haggard, arguably more than anyone else, laid the foundations for what I call "modern exotic adventure". That takes into account everything from Tarzan to El Borak to James Bond -- Fleming was an HRH fan -- to Indiana Jones to Agent Pendergast.  Burroughs' John Carter tales have been called "Haggard on Mars" and there's something to that.  Haggard had an equally profound effect on fantasy literature, finding fans from Lovecraft to Tolkien to Moorcock.  CL Moore and Leigh Brackett were both admirers of the Man from Ditchingham.

All of this influence wouldn't mean as much if Haggard's fiction didn't still kick ass. It does, and I wish I'd started reading HRH a lot earlier than I actually did. Learn from my mistakes.

Here is an excellent site with great Haggard etexts:

freeread.com.au/@rglibrary/HRiderHaggard/HRHaggard.html


Here is the REH Bookshelf entry on Haggard:

web.archive.org/web/20051127102737/http://rehupa.com:80/bookshelf_h.htm#Haggard, Sir H[enry] Rider

Don't be fooled by the relatively short entry. We have absolute proof of at least one more instance that Burke missed and there are plenty of startling parallels with Haggard to be found in REH's yarns. Still, the known books in REH's library make a damn good reading list, though not what I would advise right off the bat, necessarily.














HRH: Layin' down the foundations of modern exotic adventure fiction and fantasy like a boss.

[elegos7]

Jun 23, 2017 17:44:14 GMT -5 deuce said:

All of this influence wouldn't mean as much if Haggard's fiction didn't still kick ass. It does, and I wish I'd started reading HRH a lot earlier than I actually did. Learn from my mistakes.

Here is an excellent site with great Haggard etexts:

freeread.com.au/@rglibrary/HRiderHaggard/HRHaggard.html

What are your favourite HRH books?
I have already read King Solomon's Mines and She, probably the most famous ones.

[deuce]

Jun 23, 2017 22:29:51 GMT -5 elegos7 said:

Jun 23, 2017 17:44:14 GMT -5 deuce said:

All of this influence wouldn't mean as much if Haggard's fiction didn't still kick ass. It does, and I wish I'd started reading HRH a lot earlier than I actually did. Learn from my mistakes.

Here is an excellent site with great Haggard etexts:

freeread.com.au/@rglibrary/HRiderHaggard/HRHaggard.html

What are your favourite HRH books?
I have already read King Solomon's Mines and She, probably the most famous ones.

Hey Elegos!  

What are my favorite Haggard books?  Hard question, my friend.  For one thing, I've only read about 20 of HRH's 58 novels and there are probably some excellent ones that I haven't read yet. For another, many of those I've read have been really good, but in different ways.

If you're wanting to stay within the Quatermain-Ayesha stories, then read Heu-Heu, or The Monster and then She and Allan.  One follows the other chronologically. Also, IMO, both had a definite effect on several Howard yarns, including at least one Conan tale.  I would leave Allan Quatermain -- the last Quatermain novel -- until you've read at least those two.  The emotional power is a little greater that way, IMO.

If you're wanting to branch off from the Quatermain-Ayesha cycle, then the obvious two are The People of the Mist and Eric Brighteyes.  Both are widely acknowledged as being Haggard classics.  IMO, REH was influenced by several elements in TPotM.

There are several others I would highly recommend -- I've found that reading Haggard can be fairly addictive -- but those above are the ones I would start with.

Hope that helps.  

[deuce]

Jun 23, 2017 22:29:51 GMT -5 elegos7 said:

Jun 23, 2017 17:44:14 GMT -5 deuce said:

All of this influence wouldn't mean as much if Haggard's fiction didn't still kick ass. It does, and I wish I'd started reading HRH a lot earlier than I actually did. Learn from my mistakes.

Here is an excellent site with great Haggard etexts:

freeread.com.au/@rglibrary/HRiderHaggard/HRHaggard.html

What are your favourite HRH books?
I have already read King Solomon's Mines and She, probably the most famous ones.

As an addendum to my earlier comments...

We know REH owned The Ancient Allan.  On top of that, Howard mentioned Haggard's mystical plant, the taduki, in an early fragment.  The Ancient Allan comprises part of what some have called the "Taduki Quartet":

www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-taduki-quartet/

The "Quartet" leads right into Heu-Heu.  Also, I must add that Nada the Lily is chronologically the very first novel in the Quatermain series, though Quatermain isn't actually in the book. Excellent, nonetheless.  It once again points up just how vast Haggard's canon is and how easy it is to jump in anywhere, which is how both you and I started.

Hope that helps.  

[elegos7]

Jun 27, 2017 8:59:24 GMT -5 deuce said:

Jun 23, 2017 22:29:51 GMT -5 elegos7 said:

On top of that, Howard mentioned Haggard's mystical plant, the taduki, in an early fragment.  The Ancient Allan comprises part of what some have called the "Taduki Quartet":

www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-taduki-quartet/

Hope that helps.  

Hi Deuce,

Thanks for the recommendations.

I do not recall this early REH fragment where he mentions the taduki. Where was it mentioned?

[deuce]

Jun 27, 2017 22:12:15 GMT -5 elegos7 said:

Jun 27, 2017 8:59:24 GMT -5 deuce said:

On top of that, Howard mentioned Haggard's mystical plant, the taduki, in an early fragment.  The Ancient Allan comprises part of what some have called the "Taduki Quartet":

www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-taduki-quartet/

Hope that helps.  

Hi Deuce,

Thanks for the recommendations.

I do not recall this early REH fragment where he mentions the taduki. Where was it mentioned?

Being a relative Haggard newbie, I thought I'd "discovered" a bombshell when I noticed the taduka/taduki thing.  Then Jeff Shanks informed me author Charles Rutledge had pointed it out in 2011.  


singular--points.blogspot.com/2011/01/ancient-allison.html

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A quote here from Dwayne Olson, an editor at the respected publishing house of Fedogan & Bremer. Like myself, he's only gotten into Haggard in the last few years.

Just finished going through the galleys for the upcoming Fedogan and Bremer rerelease of DEAD TITANS, WAKEN!/INVISIBLE SUN from Donald Wandrei. Was struck by the scene in the first (Also included in Wandrei's WEB OF EASTER ISLAND) of the ancient, and giant, bone mound in the cavern (as in SHE the bodies dropped down from above). Last I'd read this, I hadn't read SHE. Now that I have the similarity is unmistakable.

Can't remember Wandrei ever mentioning Haggard in correspondence but it's hard to believe he wouldn't have read him, at least in his youth. Can't help but believe SHE was the inspiration for that chapter. Must have made quite the impression.
-- Dwayne Olson

In regard to Wandrei... We do know that Lovecraft admired She and that Clark Ashton Smith was a Haggard fan.  It requires no big stretch of the imagination to see Wandrei reading HRH at some point. Haggard was probably second only to Poe -- in some ways -- as an influence upon weird fiction in the early 20th century, IMO.

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"To Mr. Kipling and to Mr. Haggard I owe a debt of gratitude for having stimulated my youthful imagination and this I greatly acknowledge."

-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

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A great review of Haggard's immortal novel, She:


carra-lucia-books.co.uk/2016/03/01/h-rider-haggard-she/

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Some quotes selected by Benjamin Ivry from the 2004 B&N edition of King Solomon's Mines...


“A sharp spear,” runs the Kukuana saying, “needs no polish;” and on the same principle I venture to
hope that a true story, however strange it may be, does not require to be decked out in fine words.

(page 8)


There, there, it is a cruel and a wicked world, and for a timid man I have been mixed up in a deal of
slaughter. (page 10)


“There is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it.” (page 49)


There he sat, a sad memento of the fate that so often overtakes those who would penetrate into the
unknown; and there probably he will still sit, crowned with the dread majesty of death, for centuries
yet unborn, to startle the eyes of wanderers like ourselves, if any such should ever come again to
invade his loneliness. (page 70)


“The diamonds are surely there, and you shall have them since you white men are so fond of toys and
money.” (page 92)


“The sun is dying—the wizards have killed the sun.” (page 124)


I shook my head and looked again at the sleeping men, and to my tired and yet excited imagination it
seemed as though death had already touched them. My mind’s eye singled out those who were sealed
to slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the mystery of human life, and an
overwhelming sorrow at its futility and sadness. Tonight these thousands slept their healthy sleep, tomorrow
they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be stiffening in the
cold; their wives would be widows, their children fatherless, and their place know them no more for
ever. (page 131)

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The Books of H. Rider Haggard: A Chronological Survey.


www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/16/mullen16bib.htm



Ken Barr cover for the Zebra edition of The Wanderer's Necklace:

[Von K]

That's a great overview Deuce, thanks!

[deuce]

This novel by HRH served as a partial basis for Philip Jose Farmer's Khokarsa/Opar books...

[themirrorthief]

a great, great fantasy writer...one of my very top tier authors

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A great Kelly cover on this HRH omnibus...