2 the swart Egyptian: “Swart” means swarthy, or dark-skinned.
3 By Osiris did she curse me and by Isis, by Nephthys and by Anubis, by Sekhet, the cat-headed, and by Set: The curse names virtually all of the most important ancient Egyptian gods. Osiris and Isis we have already met; Nephthys was the goddess associated with the ritual of the dead and the wife of Set, the evil god with the head of a long-snouted beast; Anubis was the jackal-headed god who brought the souls of the dead to their final judgment; Sekhet was a goddess of the sun with the head of a lion.
4 like a chamois: Chamois are agile antelopes from the mountains of Europe.
5 to soar to the empyrean: The empyrean is the highest sphere of the heavens, in which the ancients believed there was nothing but fire and light.
XXVI. WHAT WE SAW
1 no Norfolk hind: A hind is a farm-laborer or, more generally, a rustic, or country person; presumably this is a reference to Job’s ancestry.
XXVII. WE LEAP
1 storm-voices of that Tartarus: Tartarus was an underworld below and far worse than Hades; it was there that Zeus imprisoned the Titans, who ruled the earth before the Olympians.
XXVIII. OVER THE MOUNTAIN
1 covered with clinker: Clinker is the vitrified rock and sludge expelled from a volcano.
2 round the Cape: again referring to the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa, to be passed on the return voyage up the west side of Africa.
READING GROUP GUIDE
1. Consider the great effort that the author makes to pass off the events of the novel as real (presenting himself merely as the editor of the manuscript rather than its author, the detailed presentation of the shard, the extensive footnotes, etc.). Does this actually make the novel seem true to life? Do you think that the author’s contemporaries were taken in, or did they readily recognize the game the author was playing?
2. Discuss the novel’s presentation of women, blacks, Muslims, and Jews. Do you think that Job’s and Holly’s misogyny is actually the author’s? Do you find the discussions of nonwhites and non-Christians objectionable? How do you imagine Haggard’s readers reacted?
3. It’s been suggested that many of the book’s themes—particularly its fascination with the implacable, all-powerful, aggressive female at its center—were not entirely understood by the author, that he was writing from his unconscious feelings and fears. Do you agree?
4. Haggard was one of the bestselling authors of his day. Do you think that the quality of his writing justifies his huge success?
5. Consider the author’s allusions to things and ideas that would be familiar to his readers: the Thames Embankment, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Mary, Queen of Scots. Do you find such imagery helpful, or are these now obscure references a block between the twenty-first-century reader and his or her enjoyment of the novel?
6. Haggard spent some years living in Africa. Do his depictions of the African landscape and its people feel authentic to you?
7. She is often considered the progenitor of the modern fantasy/quest novel. How do you think it compares in quality, style, or content to the Ring trilogy by Tolkien, the Narnia books of C. S. Lewis, or, for that matter, to the Indiana Jones movies and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books? Do you think that its influence can be felt in works you’re familiar with?
8. Fictional characters in possession of immortality are often presented as miserable, monstrous, or decadent, and the two-thousand-year-old Ayesha is depicted as coldhearted, morbid, almost inhuman. Wouldn’t extended life be a benefit? Or would a longer-than-normal life span invariably lead to a distance from normal feelings?
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition of She is based on a 1912 printing of the revised Longmans, Green, and Co. edition of 1896.
She was first serialized in The Graphic between October 1886 and January 1887. The first U.S. edition of the complete novel was published by Harper’s Franklin Square Library on December 24, 1886. Longmans, Green published the first U.K. edition of the complete novel on January 1, 1887. The Greiffenhagen and Kerr illustrations, many of which appear in this edition, were added in a November 1, 1888, Longmans, Green edition that also included hundreds of minor textual corrections (further alterations appeared in the 1891 “New Edition”), and the Andrew Lang sonnet at the conclusion of the text was added in an 1896 edition.
The editors wish to express their gratitude to Jessica Amanda Salmonson of Violet Books (www.violetbooks.com) for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of this edition, and to acknowledge Norman Etherington’s exhaustive The Annotated She (Indiana University Press, 1991).
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
Maya Angelou
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Daniel J. Boorstin
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A. S. Byatt
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Caleb Carr
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Christopher Cerf
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Ron Chernow
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Shelby Foote
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Stephen Jay Gould
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Vartan Gregorian
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Richard Howard
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Charles Johnson
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Jon Krakauer
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Edmund Morris
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Joyce Carol Oates
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Elaine Pagels
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John Richardson
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Salman Rushdie
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Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
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Carolyn See
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William Styron
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Gore Vidal
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In earth and skie and sea
Strange thynges ther be.
H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure
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