ABSTRACT
Among the many writers who became identified with Africa, both as a territory within the imperial gaze and as an imaginative literary subject, Henry Rider Haggard stands out as one of the pivotal and most influential figures of his age. Long either ignored or dismissed by modern critics as merely a late-Victorian storyteller who specialised in rumbustious tales of adventure, with Africa as a convenient and exotic backdrop, Haggard's literary and cultural significance is undergoing a process of substantial reassessment. One of the general reasons for this rethinking is the burgeoning interest in the relationship between imperialism and culture, which has become a rich and diverse field of academic debate and publication. Haggard produced his first novel in 1884 when he was twenty-eight, but within the space of two hectic years he had written the important works of fiction that were to make his career and reputation: King Solomon's Mines, She: A History of Adventure and Allan Quatermain.
