She/Ayesha (Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
- First Published: 1886
- Type of Work: Novels
- Type of Plot: Fantasy—superbeing
- Time of Work: 1885 and 1904-1905, with flashbacks to 339 and other times
- Setting: England, Central Africa, and Tibet
- Genres: Long fiction, Adventure, Fantasy
- Subjects: Africa or Africans, Voyages, Power, personal or social, Love or romance, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, England or English people, Fantasy, Shipwrecks, Egypt or Egyptians, Reincarnation, Mortality, Superman or superbeings, Fourth century, Tibet
- Locales: Africa, Cambridge, England
The Plot
Although She and Ayesha were published nearly twenty years apart, H. Rider Haggard asserted that Ayesha was a conclusion to a two-part book, not a sequel. There is also a “prequel,” She and Allan (1921). In both books, a fictitious editor presents a manuscript narration by Ludwig Horace Holly. Holly, a Cambridge don, becomes the guardian of Leo Vincey, the five-year-old son of his deceased friend. They make an unusual pair: Holly is short, dark, ugly, and especially hairy; Leo is tall and blond, and he is nicknamed “the Greek God”...
[The entire page is 1510 words long]
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