SHE (1st London edition 1887)

I tried to include examples using different lighting to try to capture the blue color and the gold gilt color. First printing of H. Rider Haggard's SHE, published in 1887 by Longmans in London.

This copy is quite beautiful. It has nice color and the cloth is not very worn at all. I think this copy spent most, if not all, of its life in the USA, for it is nearly completely free of foxing. The inner hinges are weakened/cracked, the book slightly canted, and the half-title-page is a bit discolored, likely from when a former owner once had a piece of paper laid-in.

With all of the typos that are called-for (one typo, "Godness me," is shown in one of the photos). The London first edition was published by Longmans, Green, and Company on January 1, 1887. The Longmans first edition purportedly comprised only 10,000 copies. Octavo, blue cloth, beveled edges, title in gilt on front and across spine, two colored plates present. Additional Errata: line 22 page 59 genelemen; line 26 page 126 (had should be have); line 37 page 258 (it should be if); 317 pages plus 1 leaf of publisher's list.

SHE, a mysterious white queen named Ayesha who reigns as the all-powerful "She-who-must-be-obeyed." Haggard developed many of the conventions of the lost world/lost race genre which countless authors have emulated. After its publication in 1887 SHE became an immediate success. According to The Literary World "Mr. Rider Haggard has made for himself a new field in fiction". Comparing the novel to King Solomon's Mines the review declared: "The book before us displays all the same qualities, and we anticipate for it a similar popularity. There is even more imagination in the later than in the earlier story; it contains scenes of greater sensuous beauty and also of more gruesome horror".

The Public Opinion was equally rapturous in its praise: Few books bolder in conception, more vigorous in treatment, or fresher in fancy, have appeared for a long time, and we are grateful to Mr. Haggard for carrying us on a pinion, swift and strong, far from the world of platitudinous dullness, on which most young writers embark, to a region limited only by his own vivid imagination, where the most inveterate reader of novels cannot guess what surprise awaits him.

The fantasy of SHE received particular acclaim from Victorian readers and critics. The review appearing in The Academy on 15 January was impressed by the "grown-up" vision of the novel, declaring "the more impossible it gets the better Mr. Haggard does it... his astonishing imagination, and a certain vraisemblance ["verisimilitude" (French)] makes the most impossible adventures appear true". This sentiment was echoed in The Queen: The Lady's Newspaper, with the reviewer pronouncing that "this is a tale in the hands of a writer not so able as Mr. Haggard might easily have become absurd; but he has treated it with so much vividness and picturesque power as to invest it with unflagging interest, and given to the mystery a port of philosophic possibility that makes us quite willing to submit to the illusion.

I must write to congratulate you upon a work which most certainly puts you at the head – a long away ahead—of all contemporary imaginative writers. If fiction is best cultivated in the field of pure invention then you are certainly the first of modern novelists. — Sir Walter Besant

The Spectator was more equivocal in its appraisal of SHE. The review described the narrative as "very stirring" and "exciting" and of "remarkable imaginative power", adding: "The ingenuity of the story... is as subtle as ever romancer invented, and from the day when Leo and Holly land on the coast of Africa, to the day when the Pillar of Fire is revealed to them by the all but immortal 'She-who-must-be-obeyed', the interest of the tale rises higher and higher with every new turn in its course"

The photos are very helpful in depicting the exact book you are going to buy and I only use actual photos. I can send you more if need be, so please email me