One of the bestselling novels of the nineteenth century. English original edition- King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard was published in 1885. One of the first African adventure stories, it concerns the efforts of a group of Englishmen to find the legendary diamond mines of King Solomon. The explorer Allan Quatermain agrees to take Sir Henry Curtis and a friend on an expedition deep into the interior of Africa to find Curtis's brother, who disappeared while searching for the mines. After suffering the inhospitable terrain and surviving a tribal war, they find the mines and manage to escape with some of the diamonds. Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was an English novelist best known for his romantic adventure King Solomon's Mines (1885). With Robert Louis Stevenson, George MacDonald, and William Morris, Haggard was part of the literary reaction against domestic realism that has been called a romance revival.