Katz, Wendy (1987). Rider Haggard and the Fiction of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-13113-1. Haggard was "part of the literary reaction against domestic realism that has been called a romance revival." [2] Other writers following this trend were Robert Louis Stevenson, George MacDonald, and William Morris. [2] Haggard was inspired by his experiences living in South Africa for seven years (1875–1882) working at the highest levels of the British colonial administration. In the figure of She, the novel notably explored themes of female authority and feminine behaviour. Its representation of womanhood has received both praise and criticism. [3] Plot [ edit ]

Butts, Dennis (2008). "Introduction". King Solomon's Mines. Oxford: Oxford World's Classics. pp.xvi. ISBN 978-0-19-953641-2. A decade later, another cinematic version of the novel was released, featuring Helen Gahagan, Randolph Scott and Nigel Bruce. [110] This 1935 adaptation was set in the Arctic, rather than Africa, and depicts the ancient civilisation of the story in an Art Deco style, with music by Max Steiner. Finally, I finished this book and released a long sigh, it's quite a story. It was sold to me as being an early novel of the "lost world" genre but to promote it as a forerunner to the successful Indiana Jones franchise, really misses the mark badly. She is placed firmly in the imperialist literature of nineteenth-century England, and bound up with Rider Haggard's own experiences in South Africa and British colonialism. The story also expounds a number of racial and evolutionary preconceptions of the late-Victorians, especially notions of degeneration and racial decline prominent during the fin de siècle. In the figure of She, the narrative came to famously explore themes of female authority and feminine behavior and has received praise and criticism alike for its gendered representation of womanhood. Various scholars have detected a number of analogues to She in earlier literature. According to Brantlinger, Haggard certainly read the stories of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in particular A Strange Story (1862), which includes a mysterious veiled woman called "Ayesha", and The Coming Race (1871), which is about the discovery of a subterranean civilisation. [26] Similarly, the name of the underground civilisation in She, known as Kôr, is derived from Norse mythological romance, where the deathbed of the goddess Hel is called Kör, which means "disease" in Old Norse. [27] In She, a plague destroyed the original inhabitants of Kôr.And, of course, the inimitable Ayesha, "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed", the sibilant siren who would rival Medusa for her killing abilities but whose beauty and allure is wondrous beyond compare.

The 1965 film She was produced by Hammer Film Productions, and starred Ursula Andress as Ayesha and John Richardson as her reincarnated love, with Peter Cushing as Holly, Christopher Lee as Billali and Bernard Cribbins as Job. [111] Arata, Stephen (1996). Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-521-56352-9. The terrible She had evidently made up her mind to go to England, and it made me absolutely shudder to think what would be the result of her arrival there. What her powers were I knew, and I could not doubt but that she would exercise them to the full. It might be possible to control her for a while, but her proud, ambitious spirit would be certain to break loose and avenge itself for the long centuries of its solitude. She would, if necessary, and if the power of her beauty did not unaided prove equal to the occasion, blast her way to any end she set before her, and, as she could not die, and for aught I knew could not even be killed, what was there to stop her? In the end she would, I had little doubt, assume absolute rule over the British dominions, and probably over the whole earth.” Cohen, C (1968). Rider Haggard: His life and works. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 1349006025. Jung, Carl. "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious". The Collected Works of Carl Jung. Vol.9. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp.28–30.I remember that when I sat down to the task my ideas as to its development were of the vaguest. The only clear notion that I had in my head was that of an immortal woman inspired by an immortal love. All the rest shaped itself round this figure. And it came — it came faster than my poor aching hand could set it down. She is also one of the central texts in the development of Imperial Gothic. Many late-Victorian authors during the fin de siècle employed Gothic conventions and motifs in their writing, stressing and alluding to the supernatural, the ghostly, and the demonic. [45] As Brantlinger has noted, "Connected to imperialist adventure fiction, these interests often imply anxieties about the stability of Britain, of the British Empire, or, more generally, of Western civilisation". [46] Novels like Dracula and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde present depictions of repressed, foreign, and demonic forces at the heart of the imperial polity. In She the danger is raised in the form of Ayesha herself: Principal photography commenced in southern Israel's Negev Desert on 24 August 1964, with scenes also shot at MGM's Elstree Studios near London when Hammer's Bray Studios proved to be too small for the project. [5] It was the most expensive film Hammer had made up until that time, [1] but on release, it was a hit both in North America and in Europe. [5]