Jess

Henry Rider Haggard was a British Victorian writer known for his adventure novels set is exotic places. Haggard's father sent him to Africa as assistant secretary to Lieutenant-Governor of Nata, Sir Henry Bulwer. His larger-than-life adventurers in Colonial Africa, the great mineral wealth discovered in Africa, and the ruins of ancient lost civilizations in Africa such as Great Zimbabwe would appear in many of his stories. Haggard also wrote about agricultural and social reform, in part inspired by his experiences in Africa, but also based on what he saw in Europe. His writings are sympathetic to the natives. He often portrayed Africans as heroic in his stories even though the main characters are usually European. Haggard created the Allan Quatermain adventures. Jess takes place in 1880 during the first Boar War. Captain John Niel comes to work on the Transvaal farm of a fellow Englishman, Silas Croft, and becomes involved in a love triangle with Croft's two nieces. When he is trapped with Jess in the siege at Pretoria, he realizes it is she not Bessie he loves. The villain, Frank Muller, is an Anglo-Boer who has designs on Bessie and who wants to kill off the rest of her family, steal their farm, become a great Boer leader and ultimately rule all of South Africa as some kind of monarch.