H. Rider Haggard, Author of She

by dustinhouston

H. Rider Haggard became one of the most popular fiction novelists of his time. At the peak of his career, he was writing two to three novels a year. Despite his late start,… Continue reading →

Haggard’s She and Audience

by dustinhouston

At the time of Rider Haggard’s publishing of She, Western Europe had already become transfixed with the still largely unexplored African continent. Colonization was rampant, but Africa was a thing to be coveted,… Continue reading →

Why We Love The Mad Scientist

by dustinhouston

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a precursor to modern commercial fiction. In its day, it was called a “shilling shocker,” which meant that it was an inexpensive and… Continue reading →

Lord Byron as the Byronic Template

by dustinhouston

Lord Byron had a tenuous pauper to prince upbringing, and gradually became a self-made man. The title he inherited from his great uncle helped him in this endeavor, while his abandonment by his… Continue reading →

Wordsworth’s Ode: Pre-Existence and Childhood

by dustinhouston

In William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, the speaker equates the experience of a being a young child with the existence of nature itself. By moving from pre-existent… Continue reading →