King Solomon's Mines

Abstract

The novel tells of a search of an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain for the missing brother of one of the party. It is one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa and is considered to be the genesis of the lost world literary genre. One of the first African adventure stories, it concerns the efforts of a group of Englishmen to find the legendary diamond mines of King Solomon. The explorer Allan Quatermain agrees to take Sir Henry Curtis and a friend on an expedition deep into the interior of Africa to find Curtis’s brother, who disappeared while searching for the mines. After suffering the inhospitable terrain and surviving a tribal war, they find the mines and manage to escape with some of the diamonds. On the way home they find Curtis’s brother alive but injured.