Smith and the Pharaohs

In Haggard's romance Smith and the Pharaohs, the Englishman James Ebenezer Smith falls in love with the plaster cast of the Egyptian Queen Ma-Mee at the British Museum. Unable to shake his infatuation, Smith travels to Egypt where he discovers and excavates Ma-Mee's tomb. Smith spends a night the Cairo museum where he learns that he is the reincarnation of Ma-Mee's lover, a court sculptor named Horu, and in a marriage of spirits they exchange rings. The Strand Magazine serialized SP between December 1912 and February 1913, in a printing accompanied by 1 color and 12 black and white illustrations by Alec Ball. In 1920 J.W. Arrowsmith Ltd, Bristol and London, published the first UK edition of Smith and the Pharaohs, And Other Tales, which also included the stories "Magepa the Buck," "The Blue Curtains," "Little Flower," "Only a Dream," and "Barbara Who Came Back." Longmans, Green and Co., New York, published the 1st US edition of SPOT in 1921.

Further Reading

Holterhoff, Kate. “Egyptology and Darwinian Evolution in Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard: The Scientific Imagination.” English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920. 60.3 (June 2017): 314-340.

Higgins, D.S. Rider Haggard: The Great Storyteller. London: Cassell, 1981. Print.

Whatmore, D.E.. H Rider Haggard: A Bibliography. Westport, CT: Meckler Publishing Co., 1987. F49, 65-66. Print.