Fun with Project Gutenberg

Just a short post today, inspired by TCM’s airing of the 1950 version of the movie “King Solomon’s Mines”. The movie is based on a book written by H. Rider Haggard in 1885. The movie isn’t bad, but it isn’t fantastic. The book however is one of the most influential stories written in the English language.

King Solomon’s Mines is the first of what would be known as the “Lost Worlds” genre, eventually entered by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World), and Rudyard Kipling (The Man Who Would be King). It inspired many of the pulp adventure stories of the 20s and 30s (such as Doc Savage), and ultimately became a big influence on the Indiana Jones series of movies.

The plot is set in colonial Africa in the late 19th century. The book’s story follows the adventures of a group led by Alain Quartermain to discover the fate of the brother of Sir Henry Curtis, who has hired Quartermain to lead the expedition. What follows is a tale of adventure in the African interior centered around the perils of what was at the time a mostly unexplored region.

A lot of people know Quartermain’s character mainly from Alan Moore’s graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which he plays no small part. Some might know him from the movie of the same name. Though Moore’s graphic novel has I believe the closer portrayal of the two, neither the movie nor the novel really get Quartermain’s character quite right. Though no less than six movies have been made of King Solomon’s Mines (including the 1986 “Alan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold”, which attempted to cash in on “Raiders of the Lost Ark”s popularity) none of them I feel has really done the book justice.

Because H. Rider Haggard’s books are so old, most are in the public domain. They can now be found at Project Gutenberg. Happy reading.