Talk:H. Rider Haggard

Links to articles?

The chronology features links to ebooks... why are there no links to wikipedia articles on specific novels? Applebizzy (talk) 20:35, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

More?

I was hoping for a lot more from this article. Specifically, was HR Haggard successful as a novelist in his time? What was his relationship with his work? I am impressed by how he manages to create what feel like very real fictional places, but to what extent are his places based on real sites that he visited while in Africa? He describes lots of fever, did he suffer from malaria? Cherrywood (talk)

sf?

This author has been suggested for inclusion in Category:Science fiction writers: which of his books gave rise to this suggestion? --Phil | Talk 08:32, Oct 6, 2004 (UTC)

The (relatively few, mind) Haggard novels I've read tend toward the mystical/magical - thousand-year-old sorceresses, lost civilisations in darkest Africa, that sort of thing; I can't think offhand of anything in any of them that qualifies as "science fiction", even under the relaxed contemporary standards that let things like Barsoom in. (Come to think of it, the lost civilisation in Ayesha had discovered how to turn base metal into gold - but I can't recall whether it was by mystical or technological means, nor whether they had other capabilities along those lines.) --Paul A 08:47, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"thousand-year-old sorceresses, lost civilisations in darkest Africa, that sort of thing", yes - therefore I think that Category:Fantasy_writers is more appropriate than Category:Science fiction writers - I added it. Gestumblindi 19:24, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think he is SF. Lost race stories are SF. Kdammers 10:19, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ag

Haggard wrote a significant work on agriculture (agricultural economics). he was even knighted for his work on agriculture. In the Great Soviet Encyclopeida, this is what is covered in the article on him. Lenin mentioned his work. Something of this needs to be put into the article.Kdammers 10:19, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate entry

In the "Chronology of works", "Montezuma's Daughter" is listed twice with different years (1893, 1899). Is that correct?

1893 is correct. I removed the duplicate entry. -- ToE^T 16:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

H. Rider Haggard

There is no mention of the version this man is best known as - except under his portrait. And there "H. Rider Haggard" is called his pseudonym. If you look at the Wik discussion of that word, you'll see that it isn't really an appropriate label in this case. Let's fix this up. Kdammers 09:43, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. He seems to be credited invariably as "H. Rider Haggard" and the Rider Haggard Society even drops the H. This article needs to be moved to "H. Rider Haggard". --Tysto (talk) 23:29, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Founder of lost-world genre??

HRH was important in popularizing lost worlds, but he was not the first to write of these, e.g., if I'm not mistaken, E. A. Poe preceded him. Kdammers 02:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Schooling

The wording used for what school he went to as a child is sort of... Odd. Did he go to the private school or the public one? I can't tell. ElectricTurahk 20:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

• Haggard actually attended both and I have expanded on this in the biography section in an attempt to clarify. Although one of the wonderful idiosyncrasies of British English is that British private schools are referred to as public schools. Mutt 14:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

They are called Public Schools because when they were founded several hundred years ago, the only other schools available were those of an ecclesiastical nature, and so were not open to anyone, being restricted to those entering the clergy, etc. Thus the new schools, such as Eton College, Harrow School and later Rugby School, were 'public' in the sense that they were open to anyone, providing they had the money to pay the fees. When education became more widespread with the instituting of state education, the new state schools were all even more 'public' than the Public Schools, which accounts for the confusion of some people nowadays. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.74.223 (talk) 21:26, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Definition/Citation

This article claims that a contrary example to colonialism in Haggard's writing is: "Having developed an intense mutual friendship with the three Englishmen who help him regain his throne, [the African king] accepts their advice and abolishes witch-hunts and arbitrary capital punishment." But that is precisely a colonialist stereotype and goal: the "enlightened" white men to whom the "native" becomes sycophantic by adopting their Western mores. This appears to be using an idiosyncratic, personal definition of "colonialism" and/or one that selectively chooses particular Western mores as inherently positive and arbitrarily non-colonialist. "Heroic" is not an antonym of "colonialist stereotype." None of the discussion about colonialism has any inline citations. Such references are necessary to establish the validity of this analysis, which currently reads like a personal essay, original research and/or an apologia for someone's favorite author. 76.23.157.102 (talk) 17:52, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

How positively Soviet you sound.

Actually I think you'll find the book text you quote is actually referring to attempting to bring a stone or iron age culture into what was then the modern world with as little distress to these people as possible, the modern world's own intrusion on these cultures being inevitable sooner-or-later whether these cultures liked it or not. Haggard's country had to do it for itself the hard way over a period of several thousand years, the other countries however had the luxury of having someone else to help do that for them, hopefully missing out the numerous and bloody mistakes, such as civil war and revolution, that Haggard's own country had made along the way, and which some countries, perhaps not-coincidently most of whom were not part of former British colonialism, where still undergoing as late as the final years of the twentieth century, and which were being fought not with swords, pikes, and matchlock muskets as Haggard's own countrymen had had to use, but were instead being carried out using automatic weapons and tanks.

Whilst colonialism isn't ideal, it is a good idea before criticising it to find out what it was that it replaced.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.50.167 (talk) 19:46, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Page move to H. Rider Haggard

I suggest that this page be moved to H. Rider Haggard, the name by which he was known professionally. I see that there was brief discussion of this issue more than 2 years ago, and the page history indicates an attempt to move the page in the past, which led to an admin. protecting the page. The page move makes sense and is in keeping with Wiki policy and precedent. Any thoughts? ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 16:14, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I've moved it since this has been proposed a couple of times with no dissenting opinions. I also agree that the move makes sense. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:44, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Chronology of works?

What's happened to the chronolgy of works - has it been deleted?

Restore please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.12.104.73 (talk) 20:15, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I've restored this plus the See-Also section. I was astonished that this was a major author and yet the article had no bibliography. I then looked for a See-Also section thinking perhaps the bibliography was on a separate page and there was no See-Also either. Finally I went to the top to look at the Contents box. saw "Chronology of works" with two subsections. I clicked fruitlessly - nothing happened. It turned out the contents sections were hidden in a collapse box. I deleted the collapse stuff and also removed the comment that had been hiding the See-Also.

I can see why the chronology and see-also had been hidden as the article now ends with four long list-style sections which are "Chronology of works," "See also," "References," and "External links." One thought is to move the Chronology to its own article. I spooled through all of the authors in the See-Also section and found that other than for Rudyard Kipling the author's had their bibliography sections embedded in the main article. Kipling's article has a partial bibliography in his main article, presumably of his more notable works, the his full bibliography is in Rudyard Kipling bibliography plus Rudyard Kipling: Collected Works. There is a discussion thread to merge the latter two those into a single article. If you look at Wikipedia:Featured lists#Literature and theatre you'll see that the bibliography is split between H. Rider Haggard bibliography and List of works by H. Rider Haggard named pages with the use of a "bibliography" suffix having an edge in terms of numbers.

An alternative to a separate article for the bibliography would be to have the notable works (the ones that currently have active links to other WP articles) the in the article and to have a collapse box that exposes the full list of works. The downside of that is that collapse boxes are not common in the main body of an article. I've given that method a try in this article. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:14, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

E.R. Burroughs

Haggard is cited as an influence on Burroughs. Where is the evidence for this? Others have suggested the more credible 'Gulliver on Mars' tale as a direct influence but as far as I can see there was no evidence that Burroughs even read Haggard. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.233.30.229 (talk) 08:17, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

"To Mr. Kipling as to Mr. Haggard I owe a debt of gratitude for having stimulated my youthful imagination" -- Edgar Rice Burroughs (one of find this quote on Haggard's Wikiquote page: "Quotes about Haggard") The Nineteenth Century (talk) 08:45, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

See also

I have rehidden the see-also names, without context they are worthless. Why am I clicking on Alexandre Dumas, père? did he influence H. Rider Haggard? was H. Rider Haggard influenced by him? Then add them to the proper place in the infobox. Are they similar writers somehow? That is why we have categories. Without any context it is just a random list. I have no idea why I am going to Alexandre Dumas, père from this article. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:37, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree in part and so was going to edit the list to add the time period and why for various authors and delete those that seem unrelated to Haggard rather than just deleting the entire section. For example, Louis Henri Boussenard was was a French author of adventure novels, dubbed the French Rider Haggard during his lifetime. Presumably he qualifies as worthwhile of a "see also." The main hassle is that comment about Boussenard is not sourced in his article. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:19, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

It was never deleted, just hidden until the context was apparent. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:24, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

99% of the people on WP only view articles and so commenting something out is deletion from their POV. I've pared the see-also list down to those that seemed related as being contemporaneous authors known for writing adventure set in Africa. If then, I'm not happy as what I did felt subjective (I went at it seeking a reason for the list and then constructing the list based on that reason). Maybe we'd be better off deleting (for real) the entire See-Also unless someone has an external source that links these authors. Another option is to construct a templated collapse list of, for example, "Authors of adventure published prior to 1930." I'd see to inspect the original list (which seems duplicated on many articles) to see what the common thread is. An example of the template would be Template:Modern Dharmic writers. --Marc Kupper|talk 20:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the 'See also' section is entirely redundant. It would suit a highly specialised genre like novels about horseracing or the wine trade. The adventure genre is simply too broad and non-specific. You could fill twenty pages with it. Valetude (talk) 00:59, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Why are "The Brethren" suddenly missing?

The cache shows the novel "Brethren" (1904) was mentioned along with the appropriate link - as it should be in an encyclopaedic entry - and now it's nowhere to be found. What's going on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.182.153.107 (talk) 21:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Biography - "Rider Haggard: The Great Storyteller" by D.S.Higgins

My Haggard biography has been out of print for many years but is now available on Kindle - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053TRHOA. As the Product Description states: 'In this is new, revised and updated edition of his comprehensive biography of Rider Haggard, D.S. Higgins uses both the mass of previously unpublished material he unearthed and the evidence contained in Haggard’s sixty-nine novels to show that the best-selling author left much more for posterity than he would knowingly have revealed to his millions of readers. Sydney Higgins discovered the identity of the woman with whom Haggard fell in love when he was a teenager. Although the affair was unconsummated and both married other partners, he believed that their love was eternal and they would be reunited after death. This love that haunted Haggard throughout his life, combined with feelings of guilt and disgust at his early sexual encounters, led him to believe that it was the fire of sex that destroyed the otherwise untarnished beauty of pure love. It is this belief that powered his vivid description of the transformation scene in She where the ‘most beautiful woman in the world’ who had lived for an eternity withers and dies in the flames immediately prior to marrying the man she had always loved. Haggard, the ill-educated younger son of a blustering Norfolk Squire, was inspired by these secret inner feelings to write, in a golden five-year period that started when he was twenty-nine, five books that were the sensation of his age – King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quatermain, Jess, She and Cleopatra. The last, he dedicated to his mother whom he always loved deeply and appears to have written to please her. Shortly after Cleopatra was published, she died. A few weeks later, Haggard finished Nada the Lily and that too was justifiably a great success. He was at the height of his success and at an age when many writers had just begun their careers but with his mother’s death he seemed to lose his inspiration and his obsession to write. He did not start another book for sixteen months. During the next twelve years, he did write another twenty-five novels but much time and effort were spent producing non-fiction books that are now all but forgotten although one at least, A Farmer’s Year is a charming and illuminating literary gem. For the rest of his life, writing novels became a way of earning money and his interests and quest for success were concentrated on agricultural research, politics, business and public service." With just over 150,000 words, this is a very comprehensive biography that I hope you will enjoy. D.S.Higgins. Framlingham (talk) 16:04, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

re: influence on children's literature

This paragraph is at best only tangentially defensible, as nothing in it directly cites established belief that *Haggard* directly contributed to children's literature. I would suggest it is a combination of unsubstantiated personal opinion and original research. It is also (for the value it delivers) long-winded and convoluted.

One thing that is simply out and out wrong, however, is the opening sentence: "Before the 19th century, children’s literature did not exist". The recently featured article on Sarah Trimmer discusses a reviewer of children's literature in the 18th century; the Wikipedia page on children's literature suggests the 16th century as the starting point for the genre. Winterbadger (talk) 14:06, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

A history of the Transvaal

Haggard is also the author of "A history of the Transvaal": https://archive.org/details/historyoftransva00hagguoft --197.228.55.161 (talk) 10:20, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Adjutant of the Pretoria Horse?

On Rider Haggard's bibliography page, he's described as being "an adjutant of the Pretoria Horse". I've never heard the term, and an internet search just throws up a diversity of South African riding stables. The reference appears to be from his obituary in The Times of London, published the day after his death: does anyone have access to a copy of this, or to a version archived online, to see if there's any detail as to what this role entailed? Alternatively, does anyone have the foggiest idea what a "Pretoria Horse" actually is? ~dom Kaos~ (talk) 20:00, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Haggard himself mentions this in chapter 6 of his autobiography The Days of My Life. This would have been around 1878; the unit does not seem to have lasted more than a year or two. An adjutant is a staff officer who assists the commander of a regiment (or other unit of similar size), usually with logistical & administrative responsibilities.—Odysseus1479 02:14, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Confused links here

There are several articles linking on "H._Rider_Haggard#Ayesha_series" which someone has melted into the general article without fixing the links. IMHO that series actually might be worth its own passage and subtitle, yet currently the discussion of Haggard's actual work has been cut so short that there is no place for it. Anyway, the link situation could be improved. --Oop (talk) 13:06, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

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Haggard's Influence on Burroughs and Howard

The biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs by John Taliaferro says Burroughs' character of La in the 1913 novel The Return of Tarzan, is very similar to the titualr heroine of Haggard's 1887 novel She: A History of Adventure:

"Fairest of all is La, the high priestess, who is clearly derivative of Ayesha, the femme fatale of H. Rider Haggard's She. "

(Quoted in John Taliaferro, Tarzan forever : the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan. New York : Scribner, 1999. (p.95) ISBN 9780684833590 ). So while I'm not aware of any direct link, the characters are quite similar. While there would have been a few "white queen of a lost civilisation" novels published between 1887 and 1913, Haggard's novel was a worldwide bestseller and seems like the most likely influence on the Burroughs character. That said, if anyone knows of another possible source for the ERB character than Haggard, it would interesting to read about it.

As for Haggard influencing Robert E. Howard, REH biographer Rusty Burke has pointed out that Howard owned three of Haggard's books, and also referred to to Haggard in a 1932 letter to H. P. Lovecraft as "one of my favourite writers". [1]. 188.141.25.160 (talk) 19:45, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Haggard and Kipling

Something should be said about his friendship with Kipling. They seem to have been thought of as a pair. There was a witty poem by, I think, JK Stephen, looking forward to a time

"When the Rudyards cease from kipling
 And the Haggards ride no more."
Kipling told Haggard that they would long be haunted by this. I'll try to solidify this note. Seadowns (talk) 00:13, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

There's some mention of their relationship at the end of "Writing career". The poem, I believe, was more in criticism of Kipling's precociousness than Haggard, so it may not fit in too well here without additional context. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 11:20, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

See Morton Cohen, ed. (1965). Rudyard Kipling to Rider Haggard: The Record of a Friendship. London: Hutchinson. From the dustjacket - "Even in 1891, when Stephen's verse first appeared, Kipling and Haggard were already well acquainted and, in fact, at the beginning of a deepening friendship that was to last until Haggard's death... Haggard alone was allowed into [Kipling's] study while he worked, and the two would often write their manuscripts seated at the same table... Kipling tells how he got the idea for his Jungle Books while reading one of Haggard's stories, later he sent a copy of Recessional to hear his reaction before publishing... he suggested the plot for at least one of Haggard's tales, took a considerable hand in plotting five others, and read at least six of Haggard's stories in manuscript". DuncanHill (talk) 13:34, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like a fruitful source right there :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 14:04, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

"They both wished that they themselves had written the Stephen verses, and the gentle abuse became a standing joke between them" (page 18). Stephen, Haggard, and Kipling were all members of the Savile Club, and Stephen wrote the lines there one afternoon, breaking off from a conversation to get them down. DuncanHill (talk) 14:19, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

On race - again

@The Nineteenth Century: two points. a) I entirely agree with the substance of this latest edit. Guess what, this is exactly how we address such multi-facetted issues on WP - we summarize published sources that make conflicting statements, and present them in a duly balanced manner. Now we have verifiable information on both interpretations; all good. b) If you consider your mission here to be upholding or embellishing a reputation, or the memory of a "great man", please think again. WP is not the place for this activity, and editing with this type of agenda calls into question your capacity for contributing to a neutral encyclopedic work. This is not the place for hagiography, and railing against wokeness or "disrespect" is not going to make anyone trust your edits. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 10:20, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Additions by JohnMizuki

@JohnMizuki: please discuss these things on the article's talk page, not on editor's talk pages; and don't just revert without discussion.

Copied from my talk page:

I saw you removed part of the text quoting Rider Haggard on the topic of race. It's not "original research" nor my own opinion: it is the author himself talking on the topic of hierarchies among races or cultures. I only cited one paragraph but he makes the same point several times in the same book. "No original research" is to be used for "facts, allegations, and ideas for which no reliable, published source exists". The book written by the very author the article is about should be considered, without doubt, a valid source. ( JohnMizuki (talk) 12:47, 12 June 2024 (UTC) )

Yeah, no. You are quoting dialogue by a literary character. That is a far cry from demonstrating that this is the author's opinion (an author is not required to have every, or even any, character act as a mouthpiece for their own stance). It is rather your interpretation of this passage that you are presenting here. That is original research based on a primary source. What would be required here is a reliable secondary source (say, a literary critic, a biographer, or suchlike) who draws that conclusion, and to whom it can then be attributed. We don't do literary interpretation, we merely summarize those who do. Please stick to that approach - it is fundamental to how Wikipedia works. I have therefore reverted the addition, again. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:23, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

To add: Personally I think this interpretation is correct. For one thing, Haggard wasn't an author like Umberto Eco - he wasn't going to write an entire novel from a viewpoint he violently disagreed with. But that's an interpretation for someone else to make and to publish, and for us to reference. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:50, 12 June 2024 (UTC)