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Allan Quatermain
Hunter Quatermain's Story: The Uncollected Adventures of Allan Quatermain
Over a century after the debut of the intrepid hunter explorer Allan Quatermain in King Solomon's Mines , he remains one of the great heroes of literature whose adventures have been adapted for cinema and television. This new anthology brings to light a novelette and four short stories which have never been collected in one volume. Introducing the tales with a detailed resume of the author's life and career, this compendium provides information about the inspiration and creation of Allan Quatermain. A chronology of the explorer's life linked to the novels and stories is also included.
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1887
31 people are currently reading
367 people want to read
About the author
H. Rider Haggard
1,580 books1,095 followersSir 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 25, 2022
I love H. Rider Haggard's writing; therefore, when reviewing a piece by this writer I begin with certain caveats. Hunter Quatermain's story was written over 100 years ago when modern sensibilities were yet in the embryonic stage. British colonialism was considered a good, misogynistic concepts and ideas were rarely subjects of disagreement, and the big game hunter was never concerned about being considered culturally or racially insensitive. In this regard, we have come a long way. Although modern readers may characterize Haggard as racist, I do not. This story is a case in point. I don't reveal spoilers so I will leave it here, but I argue that this story can be used to disprove the racist argument. This story begins as many of these stories do, with the hunters bragging (measuring their manhood) about their previous hunts. It's a surprising trope that the action / adventure story is initiated by conversation. Quatermain recounts a harrowing tale about hunting a water buffalo and his constant vicinity to death. Here the big game hunter is much more emotive about his adventures and in particular about the love he feels for his hunting companions.
June 24, 2023
Book #10 of 2023 reading challenge
Reading prompt : A story based in african continent
This short story is quite enjoyable but it was frustrating and I failed to understand the point of piquing reader's interest by starting the discussion about the adventure you had recently while everyone keeping it hush, hush about the same. When everyone is at their peak of excitement , the topic suddenly becomes a different adventure altogether.
The another adventure was good enough, entertaining even but I was annoyed coz of beginning of the story. Make it all about the story you are going to tell, simple.
You can read the story here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2728/...
Reading prompt : A story based in african continent
This short story is quite enjoyable but it was frustrating and I failed to understand the point of piquing reader's interest by starting the discussion about the adventure you had recently while everyone keeping it hush, hush about the same. When everyone is at their peak of excitement , the topic suddenly becomes a different adventure altogether.
The another adventure was good enough, entertaining even but I was annoyed coz of beginning of the story. Make it all about the story you are going to tell, simple.
You can read the story here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2728/...
October 18, 2015
Another grand adventure in the Qautermain series! It sweeps you away to a time when there were still blank spaces on the maps. Part twisting adventure and part poetic discription of the South African land and people, the naratives of one of the best-loved literary characters never fail to excite the imagination.
May 19, 2025
Raamatuke sisaldab kolme lühikest jutustust:
- Kütt Quatermaini lugu,
- Ülekaalukalt lõvisid,
- Hirv Magepa.
Ma ei ole küll lugenud põhiraamatut Kuningas Saalomoni kaevandused / Seeba kuninganna sõrmus, aga see ei seganud mind antud lugusid mõistmast. Kõigil kolmel juhul on Quatermain jutustamas oma seiklustest Aafrika avarustes. Nagu ajastule kohane, räägib ta uhkusega sellest, kuidas tappis osavasti ühe või teise looma, sest on nii osav kütt. See oli aspekt, mis mul endal võttis ehk südame alt õõnsaks, eriti kui ta raamatu teises loos võttis kättemaksust pimestatuna sihikule lõvipere vagaseks tegemise. Augustis sündinuna kuulub ilmselgelt lõvidele minu südames eriti pehme nurgake. Aga kuna need jutud on esmakordselt avaldatud aastal 1887, kus Aafrika ei olnud veel viimse ressursini valge mehe poolt anastatud, kaardil leidus valgeid laike, savannid olid loomi täis ja hõimud elasid õndsas teadmatuses tööstusrevolutsioonist (nutiajastu pealetungist rääkimata), siis tulebki siinseid jutustusi võtta just ajastu arusaamu silmas pidades. Eks ta seetõttu mõneti nagu ajarännak oligi.
Samas rääkis Allan Quatermain minu peas oma seiklusi Sean Connery näoga, nii nagu see karakter tänu filmile "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" minu jaoks kinnistunud on...
- Kütt Quatermaini lugu,
- Ülekaalukalt lõvisid,
- Hirv Magepa.
Ma ei ole küll lugenud põhiraamatut Kuningas Saalomoni kaevandused / Seeba kuninganna sõrmus, aga see ei seganud mind antud lugusid mõistmast. Kõigil kolmel juhul on Quatermain jutustamas oma seiklustest Aafrika avarustes. Nagu ajastule kohane, räägib ta uhkusega sellest, kuidas tappis osavasti ühe või teise looma, sest on nii osav kütt. See oli aspekt, mis mul endal võttis ehk südame alt õõnsaks, eriti kui ta raamatu teises loos võttis kättemaksust pimestatuna sihikule lõvipere vagaseks tegemise. Augustis sündinuna kuulub ilmselgelt lõvidele minu südames eriti pehme nurgake. Aga kuna need jutud on esmakordselt avaldatud aastal 1887, kus Aafrika ei olnud veel viimse ressursini valge mehe poolt anastatud, kaardil leidus valgeid laike, savannid olid loomi täis ja hõimud elasid õndsas teadmatuses tööstusrevolutsioonist (nutiajastu pealetungist rääkimata), siis tulebki siinseid jutustusi võtta just ajastu arusaamu silmas pidades. Eks ta seetõttu mõneti nagu ajarännak oligi.
Samas rääkis Allan Quatermain minu peas oma seiklusi Sean Connery näoga, nii nagu see karakter tänu filmile "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" minu jaoks kinnistunud on...
June 16, 2017
A great African hunting story! What else would you expect from H. Rider Haggard?
January 27, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing (and rereading on occasion) all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review, back when I read them.
Greatest Short Stories
What is it all about (spoiler free)
This is a tale of encounter—between civilisation and wilderness, between imperial confidence and existential dread, between the hunter’s belief in mastery and the environment’s quiet refusal to be mastered. Framed as a narrative recounted by Allan Quatermain, the story situates itself within colonial Africa, but its real terrain is psychological and moral rather than geographical.
On the surface, it reads like an adventure anecdote: danger, pursuit, survival, and the steady voice of a man who has seen too much to be easily impressed. Beneath that surface, however, lies a story about ‘‘limits’’—the limits of courage, of knowledge, of imperial certainty. The jungle does not merely threaten; it observes. The hunter does not merely act; he reacts.
The story is less concerned with conquest than with confrontation. It is about what happens when experience collides with the unknowable and when confidence encounters something it cannot categorise or narrate into submission.
Why is it among the greatest?
Because it represents the ‘‘high point of imperial adventure fiction turning inward’’, beginning to doubt its own premises even as it performs them. Let us analyse point by point:
1) First, the “narrative voice.” Allan Quatermain is one of the most influential adventure narrators in English literature. He is not a naïve hero, nor a swaggering conqueror. He is weary, observant, and ironic. In this story, Haggard perfects Quatermain’s tone: practical, unsentimental, and edged with unease. The authority of the voice makes the moments of doubt and fear all the more powerful. When such a narrator hesitates, the reader listens.
2) Second, the ‘‘atmosphere of menace without excess’’. Haggard understands suspense not as constant action but as controlled anticipation. The African landscape is not exotic decoration; it is an active force shaping human behaviour. Silence, distance, and isolation do more work than violence. The story’s greatness lies in its restraint. It trusts the reader to feel danger without being shouted at.
3) Third, the ‘‘subtle destabilisation of imperial logic’’. While Haggard is undeniably a writer of empire, this story allows cracks to appear in the imperial worldview. The hunter’s knowledge is vast, yet insufficient. Experience provides survival, not mastery. Nature refuses moral alignment. There is no civilising triumph here—only endurance. This quiet erosion of imperial confidence anticipates later colonial and postcolonial critiques.
4) Fourth, the ‘‘mythic compression’’. The story functions like a parable stripped of overt moralising. It is short, concentrated, and archetypal: man, wilderness, threat, survival, memory. Like Kipling’s best work, it distils empire into symbol without entirely surrendering to ideology. This compression is what gives the story its lasting force.
5) Finally, its ‘‘influence on genre’’. Without Quatermain, there is no modern adventure hero as we know him. Indiana Jones, Hemingway’s hunters, even cinematic survival narratives owe a debt to this template. Yet ‘Hunter Quatermain’s Story’ stands out because it tempers bravado with vulnerability. It teaches the genre how to age, how to reflect, how to carry scars.
Why read it in 2026 and thereafter?
Because it speaks directly to a world grappling with the ‘‘afterlife of empire’’, the ethics of exploration, and the mythology of human dominance over nature.
In 2026, imperial adventure stories cannot be read innocently—and that is precisely why this one matters. The story invites a ‘‘double reading’’: admiration for craft alongside interrogation of ideology. Haggard does not escape critique, but he complicates it. The narrative does not celebrate conquest; it records survival under pressure. That distinction is crucial for contemporary readers.
The story also resonates powerfully in an age of ‘‘ecological reckoning’’. The wilderness here is not a resource to be exploited but a presence that dwarfs human intention.
Modern readers, living amid climate anxiety and environmental collapse, will recognise the unease underlying Quatermain’s observations. The hunter survives, but the land remains indifferent. This is not triumph—it is temporary reprieve.
There is also relevance in the story’s treatment of ‘‘expertise and humility’’. Quatermain is skilled, knowledgeable, seasoned—and still vulnerable. In a world that prizes certainty, credentials, and authority, this story reminds us that experience does not guarantee control. It merely improves one’s odds. That lesson feels sharply contemporary in an era of technological overconfidence.
From a literary standpoint, the story is invaluable for understanding how ‘‘genre evolves under pressure’’. It shows adventure fiction beginning to absorb psychological depth, ethical ambiguity, and narrative self-awareness. Reading it now helps trace a lineage from Victorian romance to modern existential survival narratives.
For teachers and serious readers, ‘Hunter Quatermain’s Story’ is also a masterclass in ‘‘frame narration’’ and tonal control. The storytelling feels oral, confessional, almost campfire-like, yet it remains disciplined. It demonstrates how authority in narration is built not through exaggeration but through understatement.
Finally, reading this story in the present time is an exercise in ‘‘historical honesty’’. It allows us to confront how literature both reflected and shaped imperial imagination—without reducing that imagination to caricature. The task is not to cancel the text, nor to excuse it, but to read it with full awareness of its power and its blind spots.
The story endures because it captures a moment when adventure fiction paused—just briefly—and looked into the dark beyond its own confidence. That pause is where its greatness lies.
In 2026 and thereafter, ‘Hunter Quatermain’s Story’ remains worth reading not because it flatters modern sensibilities, but because it challenges them.
It asks us to consider what survival means when mastery fails, what courage looks like when certainty dissolves, and how stories of empire begin to change once they admit fear into the narrative.
Most recommended.
Greatest Short Stories
What is it all about (spoiler free)
This is a tale of encounter—between civilisation and wilderness, between imperial confidence and existential dread, between the hunter’s belief in mastery and the environment’s quiet refusal to be mastered. Framed as a narrative recounted by Allan Quatermain, the story situates itself within colonial Africa, but its real terrain is psychological and moral rather than geographical.
On the surface, it reads like an adventure anecdote: danger, pursuit, survival, and the steady voice of a man who has seen too much to be easily impressed. Beneath that surface, however, lies a story about ‘‘limits’’—the limits of courage, of knowledge, of imperial certainty. The jungle does not merely threaten; it observes. The hunter does not merely act; he reacts.
The story is less concerned with conquest than with confrontation. It is about what happens when experience collides with the unknowable and when confidence encounters something it cannot categorise or narrate into submission.
Why is it among the greatest?
Because it represents the ‘‘high point of imperial adventure fiction turning inward’’, beginning to doubt its own premises even as it performs them. Let us analyse point by point:
1) First, the “narrative voice.” Allan Quatermain is one of the most influential adventure narrators in English literature. He is not a naïve hero, nor a swaggering conqueror. He is weary, observant, and ironic. In this story, Haggard perfects Quatermain’s tone: practical, unsentimental, and edged with unease. The authority of the voice makes the moments of doubt and fear all the more powerful. When such a narrator hesitates, the reader listens.
2) Second, the ‘‘atmosphere of menace without excess’’. Haggard understands suspense not as constant action but as controlled anticipation. The African landscape is not exotic decoration; it is an active force shaping human behaviour. Silence, distance, and isolation do more work than violence. The story’s greatness lies in its restraint. It trusts the reader to feel danger without being shouted at.
3) Third, the ‘‘subtle destabilisation of imperial logic’’. While Haggard is undeniably a writer of empire, this story allows cracks to appear in the imperial worldview. The hunter’s knowledge is vast, yet insufficient. Experience provides survival, not mastery. Nature refuses moral alignment. There is no civilising triumph here—only endurance. This quiet erosion of imperial confidence anticipates later colonial and postcolonial critiques.
4) Fourth, the ‘‘mythic compression’’. The story functions like a parable stripped of overt moralising. It is short, concentrated, and archetypal: man, wilderness, threat, survival, memory. Like Kipling’s best work, it distils empire into symbol without entirely surrendering to ideology. This compression is what gives the story its lasting force.
5) Finally, its ‘‘influence on genre’’. Without Quatermain, there is no modern adventure hero as we know him. Indiana Jones, Hemingway’s hunters, even cinematic survival narratives owe a debt to this template. Yet ‘Hunter Quatermain’s Story’ stands out because it tempers bravado with vulnerability. It teaches the genre how to age, how to reflect, how to carry scars.
Why read it in 2026 and thereafter?
Because it speaks directly to a world grappling with the ‘‘afterlife of empire’’, the ethics of exploration, and the mythology of human dominance over nature.
In 2026, imperial adventure stories cannot be read innocently—and that is precisely why this one matters. The story invites a ‘‘double reading’’: admiration for craft alongside interrogation of ideology. Haggard does not escape critique, but he complicates it. The narrative does not celebrate conquest; it records survival under pressure. That distinction is crucial for contemporary readers.
The story also resonates powerfully in an age of ‘‘ecological reckoning’’. The wilderness here is not a resource to be exploited but a presence that dwarfs human intention.
Modern readers, living amid climate anxiety and environmental collapse, will recognise the unease underlying Quatermain’s observations. The hunter survives, but the land remains indifferent. This is not triumph—it is temporary reprieve.
There is also relevance in the story’s treatment of ‘‘expertise and humility’’. Quatermain is skilled, knowledgeable, seasoned—and still vulnerable. In a world that prizes certainty, credentials, and authority, this story reminds us that experience does not guarantee control. It merely improves one’s odds. That lesson feels sharply contemporary in an era of technological overconfidence.
From a literary standpoint, the story is invaluable for understanding how ‘‘genre evolves under pressure’’. It shows adventure fiction beginning to absorb psychological depth, ethical ambiguity, and narrative self-awareness. Reading it now helps trace a lineage from Victorian romance to modern existential survival narratives.
For teachers and serious readers, ‘Hunter Quatermain’s Story’ is also a masterclass in ‘‘frame narration’’ and tonal control. The storytelling feels oral, confessional, almost campfire-like, yet it remains disciplined. It demonstrates how authority in narration is built not through exaggeration but through understatement.
Finally, reading this story in the present time is an exercise in ‘‘historical honesty’’. It allows us to confront how literature both reflected and shaped imperial imagination—without reducing that imagination to caricature. The task is not to cancel the text, nor to excuse it, but to read it with full awareness of its power and its blind spots.
The story endures because it captures a moment when adventure fiction paused—just briefly—and looked into the dark beyond its own confidence. That pause is where its greatness lies.
In 2026 and thereafter, ‘Hunter Quatermain’s Story’ remains worth reading not because it flatters modern sensibilities, but because it challenges them.
It asks us to consider what survival means when mastery fails, what courage looks like when certainty dissolves, and how stories of empire begin to change once they admit fear into the narrative.
Most recommended.
August 12, 2008
By definition, a short story means you have less time to get through your plot. In this piece, the men sit around the table for pages, refusing to tell their hunting story. It was the longest wind-up for the slightest payoff. Either tell it, or let me move on to something more interesting.
August 9, 2017
At first, the story had a hint of a cross between Jules Verne's "Around The World in Eighty Days" meets Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" vibe to it- a dinner party with a group of bored bourgeois gossiping about an adventurer who returned from Africa on Safari. But as I read on, the story had a little bit of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe mixed with some elements from the film "The Ghost and the Darkness". I was pleasantly surprised that with the variety of dangerous creatures that inhabit the continent of Africa, the lion wasn't the token "villain" in the story; and I absolutely adore the ending of the old hunter's tale regarding his adventure in Africa- not because of what happened to his companions but the hunter's reaction. The last sentence in this tale told volumes more about the hunter's character than the lengthy description the author wrote when the character was first introduced; it's a brilliant piece of writing.
June 9, 2021
Entertaining listening 🔰
Due to eye issues and damage Alexa reads to me.
A will written adventure thriller novella with interesting characters. The story line is located in Africa hunting for lions, buffalo and other wild animals. I would recommend to readers of adventure and a quick read. Enjoy the adventure of reading 📚 2021 🐃
Due to eye issues and damage Alexa reads to me.
A will written adventure thriller novella with interesting characters. The story line is located in Africa hunting for lions, buffalo and other wild animals. I would recommend to readers of adventure and a quick read. Enjoy the adventure of reading 📚 2021 🐃
May 30, 2020
These are short stories that were found in later years. They are just as fun as his novels.
July 19, 2020
Very short hunting story
Barely starts before it finishes, but has some fine incidental detail. Not worth your time unless you're a fan of Haggard.
Barely starts before it finishes, but has some fine incidental detail. Not worth your time unless you're a fan of Haggard.
December 29, 2021
A book in the Allan Quatermain series. Entertaining.
May 8, 2025
“…And then ladies, I am not ashamed to confess, I stood alone there before it and wept, like a woman.”
March 12, 2011
I'm actually reading these tales in separate e-books, but since I've gotten through "Long Odds,", "Three Lions," and "Hunter Quartermain's Story," I've read enough to say something,especially since it may be a bit before I get through the other two tales. When I do, I may have more to say.
The three stories I've are all hunting yarns with no fantastic elements (beyond, perhaps, some of the situations described—but when Haggard, through Quatermain, claims there are, basically, things outside my philosophies, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt). Having read quite a few of these in situations I'm more familiar with in my younger days within the covers of Field and Stream, I have to give Haggard the nod. He knows how to spin a hunter's yarn. As always, we have Quatermain's somewhat racist (to the modern way of thinking) POV to see his adventures through, but, as I've said before, it's pretty easy to see there are other feelings towards the supporting characters in these tales than those he expresses.
As for the hunter's yarn itself, we have that filtered through that wonderful, hard-bitten, experienced voice Haggard manages so well when he takes on the guise of Allan Quatermain, full of the character's strengths and weaknesses, vision and prejudices, complete with the occasional ability to see through the same (even when he attempts not to admit it). Good light reading, for those that enjoy hunting tales, and, of course, probably something to be avoided by those who do not.
For the Quatermain, these tales are indispensable, since "Long Odds" tells us how Allan gets his limp, and "Three Lions" gives us a good look at his son Harry. As for "Hunter Quartermain's Story," all those who peg Quatermain (and, by extension, Haggard—or is it the other way around?) racist need to give it a look.
Note: Thanks for fixing the spelling of the Goodreads entry for this book.
The three stories I've are all hunting yarns with no fantastic elements (beyond, perhaps, some of the situations described—but when Haggard, through Quatermain, claims there are, basically, things outside my philosophies, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt). Having read quite a few of these in situations I'm more familiar with in my younger days within the covers of Field and Stream, I have to give Haggard the nod. He knows how to spin a hunter's yarn. As always, we have Quatermain's somewhat racist (to the modern way of thinking) POV to see his adventures through, but, as I've said before, it's pretty easy to see there are other feelings towards the supporting characters in these tales than those he expresses.
As for the hunter's yarn itself, we have that filtered through that wonderful, hard-bitten, experienced voice Haggard manages so well when he takes on the guise of Allan Quatermain, full of the character's strengths and weaknesses, vision and prejudices, complete with the occasional ability to see through the same (even when he attempts not to admit it). Good light reading, for those that enjoy hunting tales, and, of course, probably something to be avoided by those who do not.
For the Quatermain, these tales are indispensable, since "Long Odds" tells us how Allan gets his limp, and "Three Lions" gives us a good look at his son Harry. As for "Hunter Quartermain's Story," all those who peg Quatermain (and, by extension, Haggard—or is it the other way around?) racist need to give it a look.
Note: Thanks for fixing the spelling of the Goodreads entry for this book.
February 16, 2014
A short story (penned immediately after King Solomon's Mines) in which Quatermain recalls a particularly memorable encounter with a buffalo.
June 3, 2022
went to add this to my to do list, but after much looking found out I already read these stories i the Kindle version of 15 of his tales, just added it as read so I won't think i missed in years to come
May 3, 2015
Nice short story worthy of Quartermain.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews