King Solomon's Mines

:For movie info see King Solomon's Mines

History

The book was first published in September 1885 with billboards and posters around London announcing "The Most Amazing Book Ever Written". It became an immediate best seller. In the late 19th century explorers were uncovering lost civilizations around the world, such as Egypt's Valley of the Kings, the city of Troy, the empire of Assyria. Africa was still largely unexplored and King Solomon's Mine was the first novel of African adventure published in English, it captured public imagination.

Related Topics:
Valley of the Kings - Troy - Assyria

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Haggard knew Africa well having penetrated deep within the continent as a 19 year old becoming involved in the Zulu War and the First Boer War which provided his background and inspiration for this and many later stories.

Related Topics:
Zulu War - First Boer War

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Haggard was the first author to present black Africans as heroes and heroines, showing a deep, if not sometimes mythical, respect for black culture. His book, for the times, is remarkably free of racism. He even suggested a love interest between a black lady Foulata and one of the white Englishmen Good, but knowing their marriage would be unacceptable to Victorian readers created a plot device so that she was killed.

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King Solomon's Mines was the first of the Lost World genre such as would be followed by Edgar Rice Burroughs The Land That Time Forgot, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, Edgar Wallace's King Kong and Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King.

Related Topics:
Lost World - Edgar Rice Burroughs - Arthur Conan Doyle - The Lost World - Edgar Wallace - King Kong - Rudyard Kipling - The Man Who Would Be King

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