Vintage Sci Fi: Book No.26
26 January 2016
Filed under Book Reviews
Tags: Book Covers, Little Red Reviewer, Vintage Sci Fi
No.26 She by H Rider Haggard
As part of Vintage Sci Fi month being hosted by Little Red Reviewer I’ve given myself a small challenge to post a vintage book each day – one that I’ve read – and to highlight some of the covers. Today’s choice is : She by Rider Haggard. Okay, strictly speaking this is a bit of a tricksy one – because given the nature of the book and also given the author, I would say this falls more in the field of adventure/fantasy – but, I think the concept of a lost world, the immortality contained here and the special magical abilities of Ayesha – who is a sorceress who can heal and read minds – well, I’m just going with it! Originally serialised and published in 1887 this is one of the original classics and has never been out of print:
1957 Hodder:
1978 Ballantine:
1982 Penguin Books:
1996 Blackstone Audio:
2002 Modern Library:
2007 Penguin – I think this is my favourite:
Books and travelling with Lynn 
I love those vintage She covers- I have the blue newer edition, so I kind of missed out on the vintagey vibe.
~Litha Nelle
Yeah – I love the cover with the sort of fine art print and the crazy hair – it puts me in mind a little of Medusa for some reason!
Lynn 😀
I re-read this a few years ago. Has not aged well, imo
I think it would be a very interesting experiment to see how I feel about this now – but of course I would have to make time for it first. This was one of my dad’s books – I think he bought the book because it contained three stories, one of which was King Solomon’s Mines – I read all three and enjoyed all of them at the time. Whether I would nowadays remains to be seen but sometimes you just have fond memories for books you read back in the day! Oddly, I never expected this to be his most popular book and given some of the more stronger feelings out there about how the women are portrayed in this it was something of a surprise to discover it is!
Lynn 😀
I haven’t heard of this one! I like the 1957, 2002 and 2007 covers 🙂
I read three of Rider Haggard’s books when I was younger – they were my dads. This one is a bit dated now and I think it would be interesting to reread it and see how it stands up. Some fairly outdated ideas concerning women but that being said I really enjoyed it at the time and it’s been his most popular book (I think so anyway).
Lynn 😀