King Solomon's Mines

H. Rider Haggard, who lived from 1856 to 1925, was one of the most successful storytellers of the Victorian age. He spent several years in southern Africa as a young man, and that experience gave his fiction a confident sense of place. King Solomon’s Mines, published in 1885, became a bestseller almost at once and made his name. It is generally regarded as the first adventure novel set in Africa, and it helped to launch the lost world tradition, in which explorers stumble upon hidden civilisations far from home.

The novel introduces Allan Quatermain, who would go on to appear in a long series of Haggard books, around fourteen in all. Quatermain is an appealing narrator: modest, practical and slightly weary, he tells the story in plain words, which gives the more spectacular scenes extra force. The book reflects the attitudes of its time and its colonial setting, and modern listeners will notice that, but its pace and invention have kept it in print for well over a century.

This recording follows the novel in twenty chapters and lasts almost ten hours. It is read by one LibriVox volunteer, John Nicholson, whose steady delivery suits a tale told in the first person. It is a good choice for a long journey or a run of evenings, and a fine way to meet the book that shaped so many later adventure stories, from pulp fiction to the cinema. Listeners who enjoy the book often go on to the other Quatermain adventures, but the first journey remains the favourite, with its famous desert crossing, its mountain passes and its shadowy royal court.