Mameena and Other Plays: The Complete Dramatic Works of H. Rider Haggard

by H. Rider Haggard

H. Rider Haggard, best known as the author of King Solomon's Mines, She, and Allan Quatermain, also wrote three full-length plays. The play Mameena, based on Haggard's novel Child of Storm, is set in Zululand during the 1850s and deals with the struggle for the succession to the Zulu throne. Mameena was staged in 1914 by actor-manager Oscar Asche, who employed the Zulu expert James Stuart as technical adviser on the production. Star of Egypt was adapted from Haggard's ancient Egyptian romance Morning Star, while the historical melodrama To Hell or Connaught, set against the backdrop of the Cromwellian colonization of Ireland, was written expressly for the stage. All three plays are published here for the first time, together with previously unrecorded information on how they came to be written and, in the case of Mameena, performed.

Hardcover

First published July 1, 2007

About the author

Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and the creator of the Lost World literary genre. His stories, situated at the lighter end of the scale of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. He was also involved in agricultural reform and improvement in the British Empire.

His breakout novel was King Solomon's Mines (1885), which was to be the first in a series telling of the multitudinous adventures of its protagonist, Allan Quatermain.

Haggard was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative candidate for the Eastern division of Norfolk in 1895. The locality of Rider, British Columbia, was named in his memory.