Written by Henry Rider Haggard, She, is novel with a subtitle ‘A History of Adventure’. It was first published in a serialized way in a magazine, The Graphic between October 1886 and January 1887. It can be termed as an imaginative classic in literature. More than 83 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide in 44 different languages. The fact that it has not gone out of print suggests how popular it is and rightly earns it a place in the top all time best sellers list.
The story is narrated in first person singular format and describes Horace Holly and Leo Vincey’s journey to an African kingdom which has been lost. Both of them come across some primitive race natives in those African interiors. They also have an encounter with a mysterious white queen who is ruling over the kingdom as ‘She’. The story is thoroughly inspired by Haggard’s experiences in the British colonialism and South Africa which places it in the imperialistic works of literature of England in the nineteenth century. Numerous expressions of evolutionary and racial conceptions in the late Victorian era have been highlighted at many places in the book. The special themes among these include the racial decline and degeneration notions which had become prominent by the end of the century. The character of the queen has been depicted as ‘She-who-must-be-obeyed’ which highlights the feminine behavior and authority of females.
The book was received well by the public and had reached immediate success after it was published in 1887. This fictional work was particularly acclaimed by Victorian critics and readers. Its themes of race, evolution, imperialism, authority of female gender and feminine behavior won it decent praise all over the world. The book was also criticized for some of its themes and writing, but all in all the sales statistics explain how much the work was appreciated by people. This 19th century classic is indeed a best selling novel.
