Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was a novelist, country gentleman, social commentator, onetime colonial administrator and failed ostrich farmer whose prodigious output comprises a significant but under-examined contribution to late nineteenth and early twentieth century literature. While his two most famous works, King Solomon's Mines (1886) and She (1887) have attracted a steady stream of articles in recent years, most notably from the fields of postcolonial and gender studies, a significant proportion of his oeuvre remains almost entirely unstudied, despite their considerable popular success in his lifetime. In order to extend and enhance Haggard scholarship we are soliciting proposals for chapters in a forthcoming edited collection of essays. Radical reappraisals of Haggard's most noted texts are welcome, but we are particularly interested in articles that investigate less well-known works or that intend to explore Haggard's diverse range of interests and under-estimated influence on and engagement with other, more celebrated authors. We aim for publication in late 2010.

Topics and approaches may include, but are not limited to:

Spiritualism and the occult
Egyptology
Ecocritical readings
Romance
Cultural cross dressing
Haggard, Freud and psychoanalysis
Botany/ horticulture
Haggard and his contemporaries
Animal Studies
Queer readings
Literary topographies
Fantasy
Gender, space and the body
Degeneration and urbanisation
The fin-de-siècle
Zionism/ anti-Semitism
Anthropology/ ethnography
The Best-seller
The Nordic
South African experiences
Children's Literature

Please send abstracts not exceeding 500 words along with a brief biographical profile to John Miller and Robbie McLaughlan at writinghaggard@googlemail.com by 1st August, 2009. Chapters will be 6,000 words in length and will be commissioned by 17th August for delivery by 19th December. Any queries are welcome.