Rider Haggard and the Zulus

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Peter Pierce (Monash University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence 1877-1917

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Resources

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Introduction

In July 1877, a month after his 21st birthday, Rider Haggard’s “A Zulu War Dance”, appeared in The Gentleman’s Magazine in London. This was his first published piece of writing. The piece was ethnographic in nature, but the subject matter would frequently recur in imaginative form in the African romances that made his reputation. Five years later, Haggard’s first published book was the personally subsidised Cetewayo and His White Neighbours (1882), an account of the last Zulu king whose demise he would depict imaginatively 25 years later in Finished (1917), the final volume of a trilogy of novels spanning the fifty-year history of the fall of the Zulu royal house. Remarking Haggard’s “genuine interest and respect for the Zulu people”, Lindy Siebel writes that

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5912 words

Citation: Pierce, Peter. "Rider Haggard and the Zulus". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 June 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19526, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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