She (The World's Classics)

Haggard, H. Rider; Carlin, Daniel (Ed.)

ISBN 10: 0192827677 / ISBN 13: 9780192827678

Published by Oxford University Press, 1991

About this Item

NF. 1st Printing of the 1991 World's Classics Soft Cover Edition thus, edited, with introduction and notes, by Daniel Carlin. Book is straight, square, tightly and evenly bound, faintly and uniformly age toned and free of markings, blemishes and creasing along gutter, spine or hinges. Small chip to lower joint of rear panel the inly discernible flaw, Cover is clean and bright, with otherwise sharp corners and joints, straight head, tail, spine, hinges and edges, boldly legible lettering and crisply distinct design and illustration. (Please see Seller images.) ISBN 0192827677. ShiroBooks, independent bookseller, takes pride in accurate descriptions, careful wrapping and safe shipping; please contact ShiroBooks PRIOR TO ORDERING if more information, details or photos are needed.

Seller Inventory # 006024

Bibliographic Details

• Title: She (The World's Classics)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192827677
• ISBN 13: 9780192827678
• Binding: Soft cover
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
• Weight: 1 pound

About this title

Synopsis

As with the companion volume "King Solomon's Mines", this is the only available annotated edition of Haggard's adventure story, "She". An Englishman undertakes a quest to find Ayesha, the mysterious white queen of a Central African tribe - a monstrous and desirable female.

Review

Ayesha is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, a 2,000-year-old queen who rules a fabled lost city deep in a maze of African caverns. She has the occult wisdom of Isis, the eternal youth and beauty of Aphrodite, and the violent appetite of a lamia. Like A. Conan Doyle's Lost World, She is one of those magnificent Victorian yarns about an expedition to a far-off locale shadowed by magic, mystery, and death.

Tim Stout writes, in Horror: 100 Best Books, "As the plot takes hold one has the fancy that [Ayesha] had always existed, in some dark dimension of the imagination, and that [H. Rider] Haggard was the fortunate author to whom she chose to reveal herself." Haggard did, in fact, write this book in a six-week burst of feverish inspiration: "It came faster than my poor aching hand could set it down," he later said.

This edition of the 1887 classic features an introductory essay by literary critic Regina Barreca, who likens Ayesha to Flaubert's Madame Bovary or Tolstoy's Anna Karenina--"literally fantastic female figures who must be stopped before they love again."