King Solomon's Mines (Classroom Classics) - Softcover

Haggard, H. Rider; Johnston, Teresa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1539138313 ISBN 13: 9781539138310

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

King Solomon’s Mines (1885) was the result of a wager in which H. Rider Haggard bet his brother three shillings that he could write an adventure novel at least half as good as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. The result is a book unique in the literature of the era for its combination of African setting, first person narrative, and an unadorned conversational style similar to that found in the aforementioned Treasure Island. Protagonist Allan Quatermain (the many prototype for Indiana Jones) comes across as a humble, common man who simply finds himself in the right place at the right time. As a pioneer of African adventure stories, Haggard is surprisingly sympathetic to African culture, portraying many natives as heroic and noble, while reserving for only the most brutal characters that contempt later authors would use in more blanket fashion to portray tribal Africans as a whole. The result is an easy-to-read, deeply popular tale which has inspired writers as diverse as Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, and Philip José Farmer. Features: Original Cover Art, Contextual Introduction, Annotations, and Study Questions.

About this title

From the Publisher

6 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Inside Flap

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, though: 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."

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1539138313
• ISBN 13: 9781539138310
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 222
• Illustrator: Heineman Lucas