Dodo Collections brings you another classic from H. Rider Haggard, ‘Eric Brighteyes.’
A curious effect of Haggard's successful emulation of the terse, pithy style of saga prose is that the idiom of this novel actually seems rather less dated in the early 21st century than Haggard's other work or the general run of Victorian adventure fiction. Improvements in our understanding of the Viking period have done surprisingly little to falsify Haggard's imagination of its setting, and the book should still hold appeal to any reader interested in the period.
Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and the creator of the Lost World literary genre. His stories, situated at the lighter end of the scale of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. He was also involved in agricultural reform and improvement in the British Empire.
His breakout novel was
King Solomon's Mines(1885), which was to be the first in a series telling of the multitudinous adventures of its protagonist, Allan Quatermain.
Haggard was made a Knight Bachelor in 1912 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. He stood unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative candidate for the Eastern division of Norfolk in 1895. The locality of Rider, British Columbia, was named in his memory.
