RIDER HAGGARD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9154, 8 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

RIDER HAGGARD.

In the domain of literature there is scarcely an equal to the meteoric and bewildering success of Rider Haggard. He was born in 1856, at Bradenham Hall, Norfolk, and was destined by his parents —descendants of the good old Is' folk families—for foreign service. Fortune led him to accept a post on the staff of Sir Henry Bulwer, in South Africa; lie accompanied Sir Theopliilus Shepstone in the Transvaal, and at the age of twenty - one was appointed Master of the High Court there. Two years later, he returned home, and married in 1880 the only daughter of the late Major Margiton, of IMtehingiiam House, Norfolk, where he resides when nob in London. With his wife lie subsequently returned to the Transvaal, and quickly found his party driven into laager by the triumphant Boers. Disgusted with the change of affairs in that country, Rider Haggard once more settled in London, was called to the bar, and is now practising as a barrister. His first literary ventures did not meet with much success, and he passed through the trials usual with unknown authors in his early efforts to secure publishers for "Cetewavo and his White Neighbours." " Dawn," and " The Witch's Head." King Solomon's Mines," written as a boy's book, was an immediate success, and ran out of print in a few days. Since then his name and books have become "familiar to our ears as household words." Thirty thousand copies ot " She" were sold in a month, and each fresh work from his pen seems to create greater sensation. Personally, Rider Haggard has much to recommend him, and is as modest and amiable as he is gifted. He objects to being lionised, and carries his honours with an ease and simplicity which win him friends wherever he goes. Without being handsome, he is a fresh, comelv-looking Englishman, with fair hair and frank blue eyes. He seldom appears in London, preferring to pass his days in the quiet seclusion of his native Norfolk.