Elissa

Henry Rider Haggard was a British Victorian writer known for his adventure novels set is exotic places. Haggard's father sent him to Africa as assistant secretary to Lieutenant-Governor of Nata, Sir Henry Bulwer. His larger-than-life adventurers in Colonial Africa, the great mineral wealth discovered in Africa, and the ruins of ancient lost civilizations in Africa such as Great Zimbabwe would appear in many of his stories. Haggard also wrote about agricultural and social reform, in part inspired by his experiences in Africa, but also based on what he saw in Europe. His writings are sympathetic to the natives. He often portrayed Africans as heroic in his stories even though the main characters are usually European. Haggard created the Allan Quatermain adventures. Elissa: Or the Doom or Zimbabwe was described by Haggard as "an attempt to recreate the life of the ancient Phoenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggest circumstances such as might have brought about or accompanied its fall at the hands of the surrounding savage tribes."