Abstract
It was ingenuous of H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) to write in his posthumously-published autobiography The Days of My Life (two volumes, 1926) that his notorious article ‘About Fiction’, had been written ‘very much against [his] own will’.1 The views expressed in that essay — published in the Contemporary Review, February 1887 — expressed deep-rooted convictions about the attractions of romance, the distasteful and even repellent content of Naturalistic fiction, the low standards of circulating-library three-deckers, and the anarchy of the international copyright situation. Haggard was never to change his mind about any of these issues.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
H. Rider Haggard, The Days of My Life / An Autobiography, edited by C. J. Longman (London: Longmans, Green, 1926), Vol. I, p. 264.
Morton Cohen, Rider Haggard / His Life and Work, second edition (London: Macmillan, 1968 ), pp. 124–127.
H. Rider Haggard, ‘Contributors at Work’, The Bookman [London], Vol. XXXV (November 1908), p. 86.
H. Rider Haggard, ‘About Fiction’, Contemporary Review, Vol. LI (February, 1887 ), p. 172.
Quoted by Lilias Rider Haggard, The Cloak that I Left / A Biography of the Author Henry Rider Haggard K.B.E. ( London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951 ), p. 147.
Norman Etherington, Rider Haggard ( Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984 ), p. 66.
Wendy R. Katz, Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire / A critical study of British imperial fiction ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978 ), pp. 70–71.
H. Rider Haggard, Introduction, Eric Brighteyes (1898; rpt., New York: McKinley, Stone & Mackenzie, 1916), p. vii.
Ralph Bergen Allen, Old Icelandic Sources in the English Novel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1933), p. 105, stated firmly that it was the best English novel of ‘any age’ attempting to revive the saga tradition.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1995 Harold Orel
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Orel, H. (1995). Sir Henry Rider Haggard and Eric Brighteyes (1898). In: The Historical Novel from Scott to Sabatini. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371491_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371491_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-39206-3
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-37149-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)