She – A History of Adventure

Theme:

She – A History of Adventure by Henry Rider Haggard, explores the theme of “an immortal woman inspired by an immortal love”.

Summary:

It was one of the first pieces of serial literature to reach a large popular audience. A Victorian professor and his adopted son travel to Africa in search of a lost civilization. Finding it ruled by a near-immortal woman of extraordinary beauty, power and cruelty, they are helpless to resist her plans to marry the son and rule the British Empire.

Three sequels

1. Ayesha, concerns Holly and Leo, searching for the reincarnation of Ayesha and encountering her Egyptian nemesis.
2. She and Alan, is a prequel and a ‘franchise crossover’, where the hero of many of H Rider Haggard’s other novels, Allan Quatermain, travels to Kôr and battles a rebellion among Ayesha’s subjects.
3. Wisdom’s Daughter, which tells the story of Ayesha’s two-thousand-year life, from ancient Arabia, to Egypt, Persia, Greece, and on to Kôr.

Famous Quotes:

“Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought.”

“Mistrust all men, and slay him whom thou mistrustest overmuch; and as for women, flee from them, for they are evil, and in the end will destroy thee.”

“For like a rugged tree you are hard and sound at the core.”

“Truly time should be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours.”

“My empire is of the imagination.”

“What is imagination? Perhaps it is the shadow of the intangible truth, perhaps it is the soul’s thought.”

“and that which is dead yet can never die,”

“the sense of utter loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the”

“and I rejoiced to think that his nerves, which, like those of most uneducated people, were far from strong,”