H. Rider Haggard brought more of the world into Victorian homes than almost any other author, yet Haggard was technically not a travel writer. Instead, he fused his extensive travels with fiction and philosophical inquiry. Like the cumbersome souvenirs that decorated his home and the artifacts that he used as fashion trinkets, Haggard seemed out of place in Great Britain. His sympathies were global. While colonists were busy exporting British culture, Haggard became a medium by which a great knowledge of other realms from Peru to Denmark was imported into the collective English imagination.

Nearly named Sylvanus by his parents, Henry Rider Haggard was the sixth son born into Ella and William Haggard's family of ten children. The Norfolk family boasted wealth and ancient genealogy. Reared in India, Ella Haggard opened her son's eyes to "the blessed kingdom of Romance," according to Haggard's dedication for The Brethren (1904). Haggard...