Lot 488
Haggard, H. Rider
Rare Books, Maps and Manuscripts
Auction: 29 August 2012 at 12:00 BST
Description
Fine portrait photograph by Ernest Walter Histed, signed by the photographer and signed and dated "H. Rider Haggard, 1901", 49 x 38.5cm., framed and glazed; Haggard, H. Rider Retained typed letter signed to the editor of the Spectator, responding to The Spectator's article of 3rd December on his latest novel "Dr. Therne", one page, with autograph corrections and alterations, one leaf, Ditchingham House, Norfolk, 5 December 1898, cut round at top (2)
Footnote
Note: This large photographic portrait of Rider Haggard is particularly fine and taken of him at the height of his powers. The letter deals with the subject of his novel, Dr. Therne (1898), probably his most controversial novel which deals with the subject of vaccination, the effectiveness of which was at the time hotly disputed. In the letter Rider Haggard strongly defends the use of fiction to deal with the subject, "Why should this method be condemned as improper ? The writer may fail in his ends; his plot may be bad, his realization of it feeble; these are different questions. But why - to take a single example - should the gates of fiction be open, as they are, to anyone who wishes to preach a particular form of spiritual faith, or unfaith, & shut to the man who desires to the best of his poor ability to protest against the handing over of the bodies of children to the risk of disease & death ?..."