H. Rider Haggard was an English novelist, adventure writer, and public servant whose fiction helped define the lost-world romance and imperial adventure traditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born Henry Rider Haggard in Norfolk in 1856, he spent formative years in South Africa, where his experiences of colonial administration, landscape, conflict, and local cultures helped shape the settings and imaginative force of his fiction. His writing combined fast-paced adventure, hidden kingdoms, ancient mysteries, quests, romance, danger, and exoticised visions of Africa in a form that became immensely influential in popular literature.Haggard is best known for King Solomon's Mines, which introduced Allan Quatermain, and for She, one of the most famous adventure romances of the period. His many works include Allan Quatermain, Maiwa's Revenge, Cleopatra, Nada the Lily, Montezuma's Daughter, The People of the Mist, Allan and the Holy Flower, and numerous other novels, stories, and nonfiction works. The Allan Quatermain stories helped establish a model for the rugged explorer-adventurer that later influenced lost-world fiction, treasure-hunt narratives, jungle adventure, and twentieth-century adventure heroes. Haggard was knighted in 1912 and died in 1925, leaving a body of work central to classic adventure fiction, lost-world literature, and the history of popular storytelling.