Ayesha

Ayesha, The Return of She is the sequel to She (1887) (and therefore She and Allan [1921] and Wisdom’s Daughter [1923]). In this romance Leo Vincey and Horace Holly seek Ayesha in Tibet. Haggard wrote Ayesha twenty years after publishing She in a hiatus he frames as deliberate, and “in obedience to my original plan” (qtd. Whatmore 43).

Windsor Magazine serialized Ayesha between December 1904 and October 1905 in a printing that included illustrations by Maurice Greiffenhagen. Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, published the 1st US edition on 6 October 1905. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch also serialized this novel in the Sunday numbers weekly from 3 September to 10 December 1905, in a run illustrated by Martin and McEvoy. Ward Lock and Co., London, published Ayesha on 6 October 1905, in a printing accompanied by 32 full-page illustrations by Greiffenhagen. 25,000 copies printed. The first Canadian edition was published by William Briggs, Toronto, in 1905. This printing included eight of Greiffenhagen's illustrations. Tauchnitz of Leipzig published a copyright edition in 1905 in two volumes. In 1908 Ward Lock and Co. published a paperback edition of Ayesha with an illustrated cover and 8 illustrations by Greiffenhagen.

Further Reading

Haggard, H. Rider. The Days of My Life, An Autobiography. 2 Vols. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926. II: 203.

Pocock, Tom. Rider Haggard and the Lost Empire. London: Weidenfeld and Nicoloson, 1993. 131, 148.

Whatmore, D.E.. H Rider Haggard: A Bibliography. Westport, CT: Meckler Publishing Co., 1987. F28, 42-43.