King Solomon's Mines

Touted by its 1885 publisher as “the most amazing story ever written,” King Solomon’s Mines was one of the bestselling novels of the nineteenth century. H. Rider Haggard’s thrilling saga of elephant hunter Allan Quatermain and his search for fabled treasure is more than just an adventure story: as Alexandra Fuller explains in her Introduction, in its vivid portrayal of the alliances and battles of white colonials and African tribesmen, King Solomon’s Mines “brings us the world of extremes, of the absurdly tall tales and of the illogical loyalty between disparate people that still informs this part of the world.”

The novel tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. The men find danger, hardship, myth, lost tribes, cruel kings, and evil sorceress, and overcome all. Through a series of adventures the men escape near-certain death, with pocketfuls of diamonds from "King Solomon’s Mines", enough to make them rich for life. It is the first English adventure novel set in Africa, and is considered to be the genesis of the Lost World literary genre.

This is the first book in what was to be a long running and prolific series