She (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

H. Rider Haggard (Author), Daniel Karlin (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2008 | Series: Oxford World's Classics

Drawing on his knowledge of Africa and of ancient legends, adventure writer H. Rider Haggard weaves this disturbing tale of Ayesha, the mysterious and immortal white queen of a Central African tribe. She, or "She-who-must-be-obeyed," is the embodiment of the mythological female figure who is both monstrous and desirable, and deadlier than the male. She is a pioneering work in the "Lost World" genre.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199536422
• ISBN-13: 978-0199536429
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #829,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ayesha is She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, a 2,000-year-old queen who rules a fabled lost city deep in a maze of African caverns. She has the occult wisdom of Isis, the eternal youth and beauty of Aphrodite, and the violent appetite of a lamia. Like A. Conan Doyle's Lost World, She is one of those magnificent Victorian yarns about an expedition to a far-off locale shadowed by magic, mystery, and death.

Tim Stout writes, in Horror: 100 Best Books, "As the plot takes hold one has the fancy that [Ayesha] had always existed, in some dark dimension of the imagination, and that [H. Rider] Haggard was the fortunate author to whom she chose to reveal herself." Haggard did, in fact, write this book in a six-week burst of feverish inspiration: "It came faster than my poor aching hand could set it down," he later said.

This edition of the 1887 classic features an introductory essay by literary critic Regina Barreca, who likens Ayesha to Flaubert's Madame Bovary or Tolstoy's Anna Karenina--"literally fantastic female figures who must be stopped before they love again." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The Broadview edition of She represents a benchmark in Rider Haggard studies. Situating She within a broad array of cultural documents on race, gender, empire, and archaeology, Andrew M. Stauffer has created an invaluable resource for contextualizing this fascinating adventure story within the ambulatory scope of the late-Victorian scientific and geographical imaginary. This edition will provide students, scholars, and the general reader alike with a sound foundation for reading (and rereading) Haggard s classic novel. (Shawn Malley )

"Professor Stauffer's editing is an exemplary case of textual stewardship: great care without imposition. His introduction is not only authoritative and lucid but stylistically engaging, as energetic as the novel itself an ideal introduction for first-time readers. The appendix topics are exactly what is needed, and the materials included provide an excellent context. The selection of non-fiction pieces by Haggard himself on questions of genre, imperialism, archaeology, and gender roles provides especially valuable insights into the author, the novel, and the times." (J. Jeffrey Franklin ) --J. Jeffrey Franklin --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (August 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199536422
• ISBN-13: 978-0199536429
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #829,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good story, terrible Kindle formating August 19, 2010

By Mary

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The story is about a young man, Leo, who supposedly can trace his ancestry to the Egyptian gods, and the older man who adopted him when Leo's own father died. Leo wants to find out his origins, so they leave England and travel to Africa, where they meet Ayesha, She, who supposedly is thousands of years old, and is of unequalled beauty. She thinks Leo is the incarnation of her ancient lover and so Ayesha holds both men under her spell, and tries to take them under the earth to a so called fountain of life, where she tries to persuade Leo to step into the fountain of life, and so become immortal. This story is good enough, but the Kindle formatting is terrible. In the early part of the book, there are several pages of nothing but questions marks, and then several pages where some of the words are again full of question marks. It is evident that no one edited this book, and that is really a shame. I would guess that Amazon is not going to take any extra pains to correct a book that is free, but that is really the shame. I feel that Amazon should not offer books, even if they are free, it they don't take the time to properly format them.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Was there an OCR problem? October 25, 2010

By Jimbo

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

It's a shame this excellent story was butchered by whomever was supposed to edit it and the proof-reader if there was one should be tarred and feathered. No one can read the Kindle version of "She" and think it could be one of the best and most popular novels ever written. Allan Quatermain would shoot the person with his eight bore rifle who offered this great book to Kindle readers in it's current, slaughtered form.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Good story, frustrating read. December 28, 2010

By Kristin n Ladybug

Format:Kindle Edition

GREAT story, WORST formatting EVER. I could hardly get through the book with all the question marks. The story was great, one of Haggard's greats, but I just got so frustrated. Instead, download your free kindle book from here: […] The Gutenberg project formats everything precisely and cleanly and your read will be hassle free!

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Dramatic scenes of adventure, but a bit hard to read August 28, 2001

By Joanna Daneman #1 HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

H. Rider Haggard's style is the ornate, 19th century melodrama style. There is none of the stylish repartee of Conan Doyle or the sharp characterization of Dickens. Despite its literary flaws, H. Rider Haggard's vivid imagination make "She" an enduring classic.

"She", or "She-who-must-be-obeyed" , a.k.a Ayesha, is a mysterious and powerful queen in a subterranean land laced with horrible terrors in darkest Africa. To disregard her word is instant death for her savage subjects. Holly and his adopted nephew Leo explore through her realm and after nearly getting murdered in the most horrible way, meet up with She. Leo is dying from a fever, and Holly, an explorer and a man educated in languages and the classics, contends with Ayesha. The very ill Leo is meanwhile attended by Ustane, a local gal who marries herself to him in the local custom of girl-takes-boy and stands by him loyally. Who is this local girl? Is she really just a native lass as she seems? And what has She to do with Ustane? Rider's description of Ayesha is brilliant, Holly is a sympathetic character and the ending of the tale is spectacular. The only reason I give three stars is that the writing is murky, convuluted and overly ornate. Still, when Rider describes scenes of high drama, horror or beauty, he cannot be beat.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "the eternal feminine" unfrocked September 25, 2001

By Sarakani

Format:Paperback

When the young psychologist Sigmund Freud picked up this book, it presented him with the idea of the Anima or eternal feminine, which as a concept was picked and enlarged by his peers, metaphysicians and astrologers (e.g. Liz Greene's work on relationship astrology). That such a catchy idea came from what was effectively an off the shelf best seller with no literary pretentions indicates just what a fun and fascinating read it presents, especially for a young man who wishes a read encapsulating the perfect specimen of womankind.
This particular edition is good for it contains an excellent introduction by Professor D. Karlin with extensive and helpful notes. Karlin makes it clear that the book is a sort of fantasy within a fantasy and the joke is usually on us. It's contents are so "out there" that the author is at pains to state "every word is true" through his chosen first person mouthpiece, and he adds several details that makes the book's events plausible while you are in it.
The book is a masterpiece of archetypes including the Anima, acient civilization and archaeology, exploration, hunting and Africa as she used to be. It further represents the last mysterious possibilities that could be squeezed out of a world whose potential to amaze was fast disappearing due to the advent of transport and exploration. It is an old fashioned Indiana Jones type epic with explorers making a big discovery that could shake the British Empire to its very core.
The elements come from Haggard's own association and love of Africa (he includes the extinct Quagga one of the descriptions)
and his contact with an angelic woman with whom his fascination was was not satiated as he was married already.... There is a great deal of swashbuckling adventure hived off from Livingstone, Egyptology, linguistics, classics and history as well of prevailing views and outlooks - but all this is eventually fused in a saga that is anything but boring in the same dynamic and suspensive style of bestsellers of the time (serialised in popular magazines) as S. Holmes and Jules Verne.
Needless to say, the book is over the top even for that time and is a literary equivalent of Jurassic Park, taken up by everyone but academia and the gatekeepers of high culture.
The subtext has disturbing and provocative elements which could by identified as mysoginy, soft porn and the frustrated psyche of the average young male at the time. She is destroyed in the end and provides the perfect excuse for both the principal male protagonists to give up women.
Haggard himself has recently been discovered to have had a secret relationship which bore him an illegitimate child and we also realise he was not really an imperialist and supported free tendencies for Africans in the shadow of imperialism. He predicted the inevitable independence of African states and the imperial overtones in the book should not be misread as jingoistic.
For people too rushed to pour over Trollope or Dickens, this is Victoriana at its greatest with many interesting contemporary themes including the theory of evolution which reads extremely fast. It is a window into history and an ultimate fantasy exploring the sources of life and immortality itself and represents something made in a hurry in the "white heat" of the author's anvil. A performance he probably never repeated.
Absorbing, mysterious and shocking - some people will find it unravels a great deal of their innermost tendencies and sexuality into the limelight of coherence and myth. Read more ›

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Old time fantasy story May 30, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

This fantasy adventure story takes place in England and later transports the reader to the bowels of Central Africa. The story starts when Horace Holly makes a deal with his dying friend. His friend, knowing the end is near, has a young son, Leo, who he leaves an iron trunk to. Horace is instructed not to open the chest until the boy's 25th birthday. In addition, Horace must take care of Leo and raise him.

On Leo's 25th birthday, Horace and Leo open the chest and in it they discover that Leo is part of a historic lineage which goes back to the ancient Egyptians. They also discover that everlasting life can be found off the coast of Africa by bathing in a magical fire. They soon venture to the hidden area to discover an ancient race of cannibalistic people who are lead by Ayesha, otherwise known as She. She is a very beautiful temptress and has the secret to everlasting life. Also, she was in love with Leo's family centuries ago. When Leo arrives, She is much smitten with him.

This book was well written and the adventure well thought out. The level of detail that Haggard uses to describe the Amahagger's (the tribe Leo and Holly discover) were extraordinary. She is easily understood to be a sophisticated woman who has strong powers of life and death over her subjects. However, I found the book a little hard to read. The lengthy paragraphs that detailed the Amahagger society were not needed and slowed the pace of the book. Still not a bad adventure book but the pace kept being diverted by lengthy descriptions.