King Solomon’s Mines was published in September 1885, becoming an immediate best seller by tapping into people’s excitement for the unknown: in this case, the unexplored regions of Africa. Haggard wrote the novel in a very short period, between six and sixteen months, on a bet with his brother to try to match Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In the process he created a new literary genre known as the “Lost World” genre, which would later influence other writers like Arthur Conan Doyle…Show more