"I invariably strove to understand the country where I lived and the society in which I found myself" (H.R. Haggard)

The future writer's first publication was a description of war dances held in honor of the visit of the Governor of Natal. Africa continued to feature in most of his novels thereafter

There [in Africa] my son was born, there I experienced much of what shapes a man's character. There I endured the greatest shame – shame for my homeland

Henry Rider Haggard

English writer, representative of Victorian and Edwardian adventure literature

Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was an English writer, one of the last eyewitnesses of colonial wars and uprisings. He arrived in South Africa (1875) as part of the entourage of the English Governor of Natal. The Zulus gave him the nickname Indanda ("a man of tall stature and good nature"), and his wife was called "a beautiful white bead with a pink eye."

You can learn about this period of the writer's life by turning to the RUDN University Library for the first Russian-language edition of fragments from his autobiography "The Days of My Life" (1926) in the collection "Mission to the Transvaal" (1973). This documentary and scholarly work on the events and wildlife of Africa was highly praised by the Africanist historian Apollon Borisovich Davidson, who served as its executive editor.

The South African theme is also central to the novel "King Solomon's Mines" (1885), which brought the author literary fame. You can familiarize yourself with one of its first Russian translations (1903), by Nadezhda Markovich, at the RUDN Library by opening the 1984 or 1991 editions, featuring the memorable illustrations of the "second Dürer" – the book graphic artist Ivan Sergeevich Kuskoff (1927–1997).

A brief electronic version of the novel in English is available in the RUDN Electronic Library System.

The author personally visited the countries where his characters operate. While planning the novels "Cleopatra" (1889) and "Queen of the Dawn" (1925), H.R. Haggard traveled to Egypt. The RUDN Library holds two Russian translations of "Cleopatra": an early 20th-century version by Vera Karpinskaya (Cleopatra. People of the Mist, 1989) and a later one by Yulia Zhukova (Cleopatra. Queen of the Dawn, 1991).