The Allan Quatermain Series by H. R. Haggard

Allan Quatermain - The Series by H. R. Haggard

The tales of Allan Quatermain were standard reading for youngsters in the years before World War II. By 1975, when I was twelve and the perfect age to discover these adventures, Haggard had become somewhat old-fashioned. His novels were re-released in the 1980s but I missed them. An Edgar Rice Burroughs junkie, Haggard would have been the next logical step. I missed the books and avoided the two films made with Richard Chamberlain and then David McCallum. (Perhaps this was for the best.)

It wasn't until I saw the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with Sean Connery as Allan Quatermain that I thought to rectify my childhood ignorance. At forty I sat down to read through what I thought would be badly written melodrama. Fortunately, I was wonderfully disappointed. Haggard proved to be readable and exciting. And at forty all the connections with later writers seemed clear. Haggard inspired Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, much of what was in the Pulps, as well as Hollywood.

I envy anyone who is about to embark on this same journey for the first time, or possibly if they weren't living under a rock like myself, for a second or third time. Haggard, like Kipling, is a writer who welcomes re-reading. You will thrill to battles of Zulu impis crashing together in bloody combat. You will feel the Terrible Hand of Fate on the doomed Stella, Marie or Nada. You will visit horrific locales like the Hill of Vultures in the kingdom of Dingaan or the fantastic lost city of Zu-Vendis. It's all here: color, excitement and pathos.

Richard Chamberlain as Allan Q

The man who created Allan Quatermain was born in 1856. Henry Rider Haggard was the eighth of ten children born to William Haggard, a wealthy landowner in Norfolk. Henry proved to be an imaginative child, which drew his father's scorn. At eighteen Henry fell in love with Mary "Lilly" Jackson, but Haggard's father shipped him off to South Africa for two years to work for Sir Henry Bulwer. It was during this time he became fascinated with the Zulu people.

Two years later, Haggard would become his own man, working for the British government. He returned to London but his sweetheart had already agreed to marry another. Rider resigned his post and married Louisa Margitson, a wealthy orphan, instead. With his wife's money, Haggard wanted to ranch ostriches in South Africa. The First Boer War put an end to these plans so Rider, Louisa and now son, Jock, returned to England.

James Earl Jones as Umslopogaas

Haggard began to study Law. It was while he was studying that he wrote his first two novels. Both were commercial failures. Later on a rail trip Rider complained to one of his brothers that Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island was over-rated. Challenged to write something better, Haggard wrote King Solomon's Mines in only thirteen weeks. It was an immediate success, and its many sequels propelled Haggard to the top of the list of British writers.

The Allan Quatermain novels by H. R. Haggard are a high water mark in the field of adventure fiction. To some "Haggard" is a synonym for "African Adventure". The movies of Hollywood have borrowed many of the trappings of Haggard's novels but few have ever captured the Haggard feel, even adaptations of his own works.

My favorite death scene in all fiction, Umslopogaas in Allan Quatermain

Haggard had an advantage over his successors and imitators: he had actually lived in Africa and knew his subject well. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels lack the conviction of the Allan Quatermain stories. Burroughs' Africa is a land of fantasy, like his version of Mars or Venus. Haggard's Africa is historic, accurate but still exciting. The closest parallel is Rudyard Kipling's India. Despite this, Haggard, Kipling and Burroughs were the same: great storytellers.

This isn't to say that Haggard lacked imagination in his novels, especially the later ones. These are peppered with mysticism and supernatural perils. The ape-creature Heu-Heu (from the novel of the same name) is an obvious inspiration for Robert E. Howard's many ape monsters, in stories like "The Queen of the Black Coast" and "Rogues in the House". The ghost wolves in Nada the Lily and the baboon woman, Hendrika, from "Allan and His Wife" also evoke chills.

The reader is free, of course, to read the Allan Quatermain series in any fashion they like. I always prefer to read stories in the order they were written or at least published, to gain an insight into the author's journey. The Allan Quatermain books have three definite stages: the first, Quatermain's greatest adventures: King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quatermain. The second set backtracks to Allan's early days. The third group delves into mysticism and Allan's previous lives. A fourth might be the tie-in with Haggard's other famous series, She, in She and Allan.

The Chronological By Publication Order:

King Solomon's Mines (1885)
"Hunter Quatermain's Story" (1885)
"Long Odds" (1886)
Allan Quatermain (1887)
"The Tale of Three Lions" (1887)
"Maiwa's Revenge" (1888)
"Allan and His Wife" (1889)
Nada the Lily (1892)
Marie (1912)
"Magepa the Buck" (1912)
Child of Storm (1913)
Allan and the Holy Flower (1915)
Finished (1916)
The Ivory Child (1916)
The Ancient Allan (1920)
She and Allan (1920)
Heu-Heu, The Monster (1924)
Allan and the Ice-Gods (1927)

Working from internal evidence and historical dates I have been able to come up with this chronology based on the order in which the stories take place:
1. “Allan and His Wife” tells of Allan’s earliest life with his father, his first wife, Stella, and his encounter with the wizard Indaba-zimbi. Hans the Hottentot is featured.
2. Nada the Lily tells of Umslopagaas’s earliest life and the death of Chaka (1828). Imdaba-zimbi makes an appearance.
3. Marie tells of the slaughter of Retief and the Boers by Dingaan (December 1837), also of Marie, Allan’s second wife. Also features Hans.
4. Child of Storm is the first of the Zikali novels. Allan meets Mameena, the Zulu Helen, in 1854. Features the battle with Cetowayo at Tugela in December 1856.
5. “Long Odds” takes place March 1869.
6. She and Allan features Zikali and a mention of Umslopagaas. This novel ties the two series together.
7. Allan and the Holy Flower
8. Heu-Heu the Monster
9. Finished – Zikali dies. (1877)
10. “Hunter Quatermain’s Story” – Hans dies. Ten years before King Solomon’s Mines.
11. “Magepa the Buck” – features Cetowayo but after Tugela
12. “A Tale of Three Lions” – features a fourteen-year-old Harry Quatermain.
13. “Maiwa’s Revenge” – follows “Three Lions”
14. King Solomon’s Mines – Harry Quatermain is now a medical student. Allan is fifty-five when he writes the account of Solomon’s mines, eighteen months after the fact.
15. The Ivory Child takes place during Allan Quatermain’s time in England between King Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quatermain.
16. The Ancient Allan
17. Allan and the Ice-Gods
18. Allan Quatermain – before 1909 (when Henry Good’s brother discovers the old manuscripts of Allan’s adventures). Doctor Harry Quatermain has died of disease. Umslopagaas and Allan Quatermain die in Zu-Vendis.

Those with sharp eyes will notice the contradictory numbers Haggard and history have provided. If Quatermain is a teen-ager in 1837 at the massacre of the Boers then by 1909 he would be over ninety but he was fifty-three during King Solomon's Mines. Allan Quatermain does not suggest he waited forty years before that adventure or that he is an elderly man. The numbers just don't work. Still, no one complains when Tarzan, James Bond or Conan lives through a hundred lifetimes worth of adventures either. This just isn't the place for math.

The shorter adventures of Allan Quatermain were written for magazines wanting further adventures of Haggard's great hunter. Having first retired Quatermain then killing him off, the author had no choice but to go back to the beginning and tell of Allan's adventures before King Solomon's Mines. These tales are recounted during the time after that great adventure when Quatermain is a rich man in England. The spirit of the narrator is one of stifling boredom, reliving better days.

Haggard begins by telling of Allan's first wife, Stella, his only love. The author might regret those words because she's not his only love, since in the novel, Marie, a similar scenario plays out with Allan losing his wife tragically again. Haggard backtracks by suggesting both wives wait together for Allan in Heaven. After that Quatermain remains unmarried, being only tempted for a moment by the conniving but beautiful Mameena in Child of Storm.

Most of the short tales are of hunting. This shouldn't be surprising since Hunter Quatermain made his living shooting lions and elephants. We get to see the adolescent Harry Quatermain in "A Tale of Three Lions" and join him on the hunt with his father.

The list of short stories ends with "Maiwa's Revenge", one of my personal favorites for it is packed with action and battle sequences. It's a bloody, violent but powerful tale, one Haggard's very best.

Original illo for "Maiwa's Revenge"

Copyright G. W. Thomas