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Frontispiece: “Ayesha”
Maurice Greiffenhagen
1888
Lithograph
13.7 cm high by 8.8 cm wide (5 ⅜ by 3 ½ inches), facing title-page, framed
Initial illustration for H. Rider Haggard's SHE: A History of Adventure, facing the title-page in the Longman's British edition (1888).
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham
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“I have looked on beauty, and I am blinded,” I said hoarsely, lifting my hand to cover up my eyes.
“So! what did I tell thee? Beauty is like the lightning; it is lovely, but it destroys — especially trees, oh Holly!” and again she nodded and laughed.
Suddenly she paused, and through my fingers I saw an awful change come over her countenance. Her great eyes suddenly fixed themselves into an expression in which horror seemed to struggle with some tremendous hope arising through the depths of her dark soul. The lovely face grew rigid, and the gracious willowy form seemed to erect itself.
“Man,” she half whispered, half hissed, throwing back her head like a snake about to strike —“Man, whence hadst thou that scarab on thy hand? Speak, or by the Spirit of Life I will blast thee where thou standest!” and she took one light step towards me, and from her eyes there shone such an awful light — to me it seemed almost like a flame — that I fell, then and there, on the ground before her, babbling confusedly in my terror.
“Peace,” she said, with a sudden change of manner, and speaking in her former soft voice. “I did affright thee! Forgive me! But at times, oh Holly, the almost infinite mind grows impatient of the slowness of the very finite, and am I tempted to use my power out of vexation — very nearly wast thou dead, but I remembered ——. [Chapter XIII, "Ayesha Unveils," 163]
In his autobiography, Rider Haggard, young veteran of the Anglo-Zulu Wars, describes how he composed the fifteen-part magazine serial She in just six weeks, in February and March 1886, having just completed Jess, which was also published in volume form in 1887. Haggard has asserted that, for him, this period just after his South African adventure, that this was an intensely creative period in his life: supposedly, the text "was never rewritten, and the manuscript carries but few corrections" (although he certainly toned down the cannibalism for volume publication). Haggard went on to declare: "The fact is that it was written at white heat, almost without rest, and that is the best way to compose." He apparently had no clear plot-line in mind when he began writing: "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."
According to critic Patrick Brantlinger, Haggard had likely read the exotic stories of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, in particular the serialised illustrated novel A Strange Story (1861-62), which includes a mysterious, veiled woman named "Ayesha", and The Coming Race (1871), which is about the modern discovery of a subterranean civilisation. Apparently, the name of the underground civilisation in She, known as "Kôr," is derived from Norse mythological romance, in which the goddess Hel is called "Kör," meaning "disease" in Old Norse.
"SHE": A History of Adventure first appeared as a magazine serial in The Graphic, a large folio magazine printed weekly in London, between 2 October 1886 and 7 January 1887. The serialisation was accompanied by fourteen large-scale composite woodblock illustrations by Ernest Killingworth Johnson (1825-1896). An American edition was published by Harper & Bros. in New York on 24 December 1886; this small volume included Johnson's illustrations translated into much smaller lithographs. On 1 January 1887 a British edition was published by Longmans, Green, & Co., without any illustrations. It featured significant textual revisions by Haggard himself to make the cannibalism less sensational. He made further revisions for the British edition of 1888, which included eighteen entirely new, small-scale illustrations by Greiffenhagen and C. H. M. Kerr.
Haggard, H. Rider. "SHE:" A History of Adventure. Illustrated by E. K. Johnson. The Graphic Magazine, Vols. XXXIV and XXXV. 2 October 1886 to 8 January 1887.
Haggard, H. Rider. SHE: A History of Adventure. Illustrated by Maurice Greiffenhagen and Charles H. M. Kerr. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1888, rpt. 1927.
Created 29 April 2025