Pulp Fantasy Library: She

One might be tempted, when looking at the authors of Appendix N, to notice seeming gaps – writers one would have expected to have inspired Gary Gygax in his personal conception of fantasy. Clark Ashton Smith is probably the most common example of such an author, since so many people, myself included, have mistakenly assumed that the works of CAS appeared in that famed list. Another "missing" author is H. Rider Haggard, the 19th century English writer whose extremely popular adventure fiction contributed greatly to the "lost world" genre and influenced countless writers of the early 20th century, like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Abraham Merritt. 

While both Burroughs and Merritt figure prominently in Appendix N, Haggard is nowhere to be seen. I probably shouldn't be surprised. Like many authors, Haggard looms so large in the imagination of the first half of the 20th century that one sees his presumed presence everywhere. Robert E. Howard, for example, was an admirer of Haggard, and took up his theme of civilizational devolution with gusto. Thus, it's quite possible Gygax never read Haggard (or didn't think him significant enough to mention) and only came into contact with his ideas through intermediaries like Howard or Merritt. 

Among Haggard most well known and influential novels is She, first published in 1887, after being serialized between October 1886 and January 1887 in the pages of the illustrated newspaper, The Graphic. Like so many adventure novels of the time – and those later inspired by it, such as A Princess of Mars, among innumerable others – She is presented as a first-person account that has been edited by a third party for publication. The first-person account is that of Ludwig Horace Holly, a young professor at the University of Cambridge. Early in the novel, he describes himself as follows:

Most men of twenty-two are endowed at any rate with some share of the comeliness of youth, but to me even this was denied. Short, thick-set, and deep-chested almost to deformity, with long sinewy arms, heavy features, deep-set grey eyes, a low brow half overgrown with a mop of thick black hair, like a deserted clearing on which the forest had once more begun to encroach; such was my appearance nearly a quarter of a century ago, and such, with some modification, it is to this day. Like Cain, I was branded—branded by Nature with the stamp of abnormal ugliness, as I was gifted by Nature with iron and abnormal strength and considerable intellectual powers. So ugly was I that the spruce young men of my College, though they were proud enough of my feats of endurance and physical prowess, did not even care to be seen walking with me. Was it wonderful that I was misanthropic and sullen? Was it wonderful that I brooded and worked alone, and had no friends—at least, only one? I was set apart by Nature to live alone, and draw comfort from her breast, and hers only. Women hated the sight of me. 

The full passage goes at some length about Holly's ugliness, isolation, and misanthropy, which sets him apart not just from his fellow man but also from the caricatured expectations of fictional Victorian adventure novel protagonists. Far from being an ideal human specimen, he is, in his own words, a monster. 

One day, a colleague by the name of Vincey calls on Holly. Unlike Holly, Vincey is a very handsome man, but he is also dying and asks Holly to become the legal guardian of his five year-old son, Leo. Vincey has "never been able to bear to look upon," as his birth had cost him that of his wife. Vincey explains that he chosen Holly for this role because, after observing him for two years, has concluded that Holly is "hard and sound at core." He then explains that Leo is the

only representative of one of the most ancient families in the world, that is, so far as families can be traced. You will laugh at me when I say it, but one day it will be proved to you beyond a doubt, that my sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth lineal ancestor was an Egyptian priest of Isis, though he was himself of Grecian extraction, and was called Kallikrates. His father was one of the Greek mercenaries raised by Hak-Hor, a Mendesian Pharaoh of the twenty-ninth dynasty, and his grandfather or great-grandfather, I believe, was that very Kallikrates mentioned by Herodotus.

Holly accepts the task and is given a locked iron box that he is told not to open until Leo has reached the age of 25. Vincey also asks that Holly not send the boy to school but to instruct him at home. A day later, Vncey is found dead and Holly takes Leo into his home. For the next twenty years, Holly raises him and the two develop a fondness for one another akin to uncle and nephew. Leo grows into a handsome man looking like "a statue of the youthful Apollo." 

Upon his twenty-fifth birthday, Holly opens the box for Leo and finds inside a note from Vincey to his son, explaining more about his ancestry and his travels in the Middle East and Africa seeking "the Pillar of Life," a source of immortality. Also included is a series of ancient inscriptions that, when translated, tell the story of a sorceress in Africa who has discovered the Pillar and, thanks to it, has ruled in secret for millennia. Enraptured by what he has read, Leo vows to follow in his father's footsteps, asking Holly and Holly's servant, Job, to join him. Albeit reluctantly, Holly and Job agree to join him and they set off for Africa. 

Needless to say, their adventures are fraught with peril, starting with a shipwreck on the coast of east Africa. The trio survive, along with the Arab who captained their ill-fated vessel, and make their way on foot into the interior of the continent. There, they are captured by people called the Amhagger. whose ruler is a fearsome queen known simply as "She-who-must-be-obeyed." Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a novel filled with coincidence and happenstance, the queen turns out to be the legendary sorceress they were seeking – Ayesha, the titular She and perhaps the most fascinating character in the entire novel.

She is an immense, rambling work, but it benefits enormously from Haggard's energetic prose. The story it tells is preposterous on the face of it, but Haggard tells it with such straight-faced gusto that, like the best tall tales, it nevertheless has a ring of truth to it. More than that, it's one of the fountainheads from which so many later pulp fantasy stories flow. Familiarizing oneself with it and Haggard's other works is important, I think, for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the genre that gave birth to Dungeons & Dragons and roleplaying games more broadly. She's influence, though unacknowledged, remains powerful more than a century later.