Fiction · 1890
The World’s Desire
The World’s Desire, first published in 1890, has been pulled into the Bibliomancer archive: the complete text, carefully cleaned and typeset, free to read online. Its editorial introduction is still being prepared.
Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- Book I
- Chapter I — The Silent Isle
- Chapter II — The Vision of the World’s Desire
- Chapter III — The Slaying of the Sidonians
- Chapter IV — The Blood-Red Sea
- Chapter V — Meriamun the Queen
- Chapter VI — The Story of Meriamun
- Chapter VII — The Queen’s Vision
- Chapter VIII — The Ka, the Bai, and the Khou
- Book II
- Chapter I — The Prophets of the Apura
- Chapter II — The Night of Dread
- Chapter III — The Baths of Bronze
- Chapter IV — The Queen’s Chamber
- Chapter V — The Chapel Perilous
- Chapter VI — The Wardens of the Gate
- Chapter VII — The Shadow in the Sunlight
- Chapter VIII — The Loosing of the Spirit of Rei
- Chapter IX — The Waking of the Sleeper
- Chapter X — The Oath of the Wanderer
- Chapter XI — The Waking of the Wanderer
- Book III
- Chapter I — The Vengeance of Kurri
- Chapter II — The Coming of Pharaoh
- Chapter III — The Bed of Torment
- Chapter IV — Pharaoh’s Dream
- Chapter V — The Voice of the Dead
- Chapter VI — The Burning of the Shrine
- Chapter VII — The Last Fight of Odysseus, Laertes’ Son
- Chapter VIII — “Till Odysseus Comes!”
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Source minds
About the authors
1856–1925 · Victorian
Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was born in Bradenham, Norfolk, and went out to South Africa at nineteen on the staff of the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal, witnessing the British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 and later farming ostriches there before returning to England to study law. King Solomon's Mines (1885), reportedly written on a wager with his brother that he could not write a novel as good as Treasure Island, was an immediate sensation and established the "lost world" adventure novel as a genre; She (1887) and Allan Quatermain (1887) followed, and Haggard returned to the character of Allan Quatermain across some eighteen further books over the next four decades. Away from fiction he wrote extensively on agriculture and rural welfare, served on royal commissions on land settlement and coastal erosion, and was knighted in 1912 for this public service. He died in London at sixty-eight.
1844–1912 · Victorian
Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was born in Selkirk and educated at St Andrews, Glasgow and Oxford, where he held a fellowship at Merton College before turning to literary journalism in London. A folklorist, classicist, historian, poet and immensely prolific reviewer, he is best remembered as the general editor of the twelve "colour" fairy books (1889–1910), for which his wife, Leonora Blanche Lang, and other collaborators carried out much of the actual translation under his direction. He also wrote fairy tales of his own, among them Prince Prigio, and a History of Scotland.
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