Allan Quatermain

Allan Quatermain is an African romance and sequel to King Solomon's Mines. Quatermain, Umslopogaas, Sir Henry Curtis, and Captain Good join forces once more for this lost world adventure in which the heroes become involved in a war between two sister queens. A Longmans ledger indicates Haggard wrote AQ under the working title Frowning City. AQ was initially serialized in Longmans Magazine January through August 1887, but was not illustrated. Several pirated editions of AQ appeared before the 1 July 1887 Longmans, Green and Co., London, first authorized edition. Charles Kerr completed 20 full-page illustrations for the Longmans AQ, for which J. Cooper executed wood engravings, plus 11 supplemental drawings and two charts. 20,000 copies issued. Most Longmans cheap editions feature identical illustrations with the first edition, however the New and Cheaper edition published 1 November 1888 features a footnote to the frontispiece.The 1891 Cheap Edition also includes a photo tint portrait of Haggard’s son Jock, to whom AQ was dedicated, and who died 8 February 1891. Quatermain’s own son dies at the beginning of AQ in what Haggard called in his autobiography “the saddest of all coincidences, if such things are pure coincidence.” Tauchnitz of Leipzig published a copyright edition of AQ in 1887. George Munro, New York, published an edition in June 1887. Longmans published a sixpenny Edition in 1904. George Newnes, London, published an edition with four illustrations by Cyrus Cuneo c. 1906. Newnes published a Sixpenny Copyright edition in c. 1906 with a cover illustration by Cuneo. Macdonald & Co., London, published an edition of AQ illustrated by Hookway Cowles in March 1949, 1st thus, with a 2nd imprint appearing in January 1951. In 1969 Macdonald & Co., London, published another illustrated edition with an illustrated dust jacket. AQ was translated into many languages. Casa Editrice Sonzogno-Milano, Milan, published translation titled A La Città Nascosta in 1939.

Further Reading

Haggard, H. Rider. The Days of My Life, An Autobiography. 2 Vols. Vol. 1. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1926.

Pocock, Tom. Rider Haggard and the Lost Empire. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993. 61,68, 71, 244.

Whatmore, D. E. H Rider Haggard: A Bibliography. Westport, CT: Meckler Publishing Co., 1987. F14, 11-13.