Abstract
Martin offers a new interpretation of the interplay between heroism, text and image in Rider Haggard’s adventure novel She. Focusing on the illustrations to the 1888 book edition, which differ strikingly from the images accompanying the serial publication of She (1886–1887), this chapter argues that the pictorial adds an extra level of signification which complicates the relation to the text. As well as discussing Haggard’s own fascination with the figure of the ‘noble’ heroine, Martin examines the positioning of She within the genre of the Victorian adventure novel and argues that the illustrated book form is ideologically significant in its ambiguous casting of heroism, gender and authority in Victorian print culture.
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Martin, A.E. (2017). Potentially the Noble Creature? Picturing Heroism in Henry Rider Haggard’s She. In: Korte, B., Lethbridge, S. (eds) Heroes and Heroism in British Fiction Since 1800. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33557-5_3
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