H. Rider Haggard's The Return of 'She'

THUS, AS HAGGARD insists in his "Author's Note," this book, appearances aside, is not a "sequel," not a sequel at all but the natural outcome of his "original design," ¹ which was, as I see it, to give us a full taste of the chewiness of returns. After all, "the tale repeats itself' (p. 51), as one hero says, meaning that the plot here is the same as the one in the first book, She, to which this is not a sequel, and also that the plot has been played out many times before in history. Quite literally he means that: these are all players doing over again what they have done many times before, under different names.