H. Rider Haggard

Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE (June 22, 1856 – May 14, 1925) was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He is most famous for his book King Solomon's Mines. It is generally accepted that he was aware of Theosophy and Mme. Blavatsky praised one of his books, She, as follows:

Has the rising novelist, Mr. Rider Haggard, also had a prophetic or rather a retrospective clairvoyant dream before he wrote "SHE"? His imperial Kor, the great city of the dead, whose surviving living men sailed northwards after the plague had killed almost a whole nation, seems to step out in its general outlines from the imperishable pages of the old archaic records. Ayesha suggests "that those men who sailed north may have been the fathers of the first Egyptians"; and then seems to attempt a synopsis of certain letters of a MASTER quoted in "Esoteric Buddhism." For, she says, "Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away, and been forgotten, so that no memory of them remains This (the nation of Kor) is but one of several; for time eats up the work of man unless, indeed, he digs in caves like the people of Kor, and then may hap the sea swallows them, or the earthquake shakes them in. . . . . Yet were not these people utterly destroyed, as I think. Some few remained in the other cities, for their cities were many. But the barbarians . . . came down upon them, and took their women to wife, and the race of the Amahagger that is now is a bastard brood of the mighty sons of Kor, and behold it dwelleth in the tombs with its fathers' bones. . ."
Here the clever novelist seems to repeat the history of all the now degraded and down-fallen races of humanity.

Additional resources

• H. Rider Haggard in Wikipedia.
• List of works by H. Rider Haggard in Wikipedia.
• The Books of H. Rider Haggard: A Chronological Survey by R. D. Mullen. Science Fiction Studies # 16. Volume 5, Part 3. November 1978.