HENRY RIDER

See also:

• HENRY RIDER HAGGARD (1856– )

HAGGARD (1856– )  , English novelist, was born at Bradenham Hall, Norfolk, on the 22nd of June 1856 . When he was nineteen he went to South Africa as secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, governor of Natal . At the time of the first annexation of the Transvaal (1877), he was on the staff of the special commissioner, Sir Theophilus Shepstone; and he subsequently became a master of the high court of the Transvaal . He married in 1879 a Norfolk heiress, Miss Margitson, but returned to the Transvaal in time to witness its surrender to the Boers and the overthrow of the policy of his former chief . He returned to England and read for the bar, but soon took to literary work; he published Cetywayo and his White Neighbours (1882), written in defence of Sir T . Shepstone's policy . This was followed by the novels Dawn (1884), The Witch's Head (1885), which contains an account of the British defeat at Isandhlwana; and in 1886 King Solomon's Mines, suggested by the Zimbabwe ruins, which first made him popular . She (1887), another fantastic African story, was also very successful, a sequel, Ayesha, or the Return of She, being published in 1905 . The scene of Jess (1887) and of Allan Quatermain (1888) was also laid in Africa . In 1895 he unsuccessfully contested the East Norfolk parliamentary division in the Unionist interest; he showed great interest in rural and agricultural questions, being a practical gardener and farmer on his estate in Norfolk . In his Rural England (2 vols., 1902) he exposed the evils of depopulation in country districts . In 1505 he was commissioned by the colonial office to inquire into the Salvation Army settlements at Fort Romie, S .

California, and Fort Amity, Colorado, with a view to the establishment of similar colonies in South Africa . His report on the subject was first published as a blue book, and afterwards, in an enlarged form, as The Poor and the Land (1905), with suggestions for a scheme of national land settlement in Great Britain itself . His other hooks include Maiwa's Revenge (1888), Mr Meeson's Will (1888), Colonel Quaritch, V.C . (1888), Cleopatra (1889), Eric Brighteyes (1891), The World's Desire (1890), a romance of Helen of Troy, written with Mr Andrew Lang; Nada the Lily (1892), Montezuma's Daughter (1894), The People of the Mist (1894), Joan Haste (1895), Heart of the World (1896), Dr Therne (1898), A Farmer's Year (1899), The New South Africa (1900), Lysbeth, A Tale of the Dutch (1901), Stella Fregelius (1903), A Gardener's Year (1905), A Farmer's Year (1899, revised ed., 1906), The Way of the Spirit (1906) .