THE BURIED MAN, a life of H. Rider Haggard

646pp., b/w & colour illus., map, hardback, d.w., C. Hurst & Co, London, 2025

ISBN: 9781911723752

Sir Harry Rider Haggard (1856–1925), author of King Solomon’s Mines, Allan Quatermain and She, lived in southern Africa from 1875 to 1881. Haggard's father sent him to South Africa in 1875 to take up an unpaid position as assistant to the secretary to Sir Henry Bulwer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony of Natal. In 1876, he was transferred to the staff of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, Special Commissioner for the Transvaal, and in 1878 became Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal.

"Stephen Coan’s deeply researched and absorbing biography of Rider Haggard is the first to give full attention to Haggard’s formative years in South Africa. He brings to bear a thorough knowledge of the times in which Haggard lived and worked." John Wright, Emeritus Professor of History, University of KwaZulu-Natal

"Comprehensive, learned, and well-paced, The Buried Man is the Haggard biography we have been waiting for. Coan pays particular attention to the South African contexts of his life and work, presenting a Haggard we recognise as a man of his time, with relevance to our own.’" Andrew Stauffer, Professor of English, University of Virginia, and editor of H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure

Stephen Coan is a journalist; a theatre and film writer-director; author of poetry collection Chant of the Doves, and editor of two volumes of previously unpublished work by H. Rider Haggard: Diary of An African Journey (1914) and (with Alfred Tella) Mameena and Other Plays. He lives in Johannesburg.