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The Ivory Child is a novel by H. Rider Haggard featuring Allan Quatermain. It is the eighth Quatermain novel, and the twelfth Quatermain story overall. It was first published in 1916 simultaneously by Cassel in the UK and Longmans Green in the United States.
This Campbell Classic Edition is dedicated to Bill Wagner, bibliophile, cinephile, collector, and literary historian.ill Wagner was reportedly born on a Sunday evening in the City of Brotherly Love, but the details of his education and subsequent life are sketchy at best, with much of the information bound up in the red tape and musty files of the foreign office. What is known for sure is that he at one time was appointed as an agent of the Treasury, and tracked down those who by subterfuge or mere error, denied the nation its proper due.His vast collection of books and manuscripts are kept safely hidden in the mystical lands of the Jerseys.
While Quatermain visits Lord Ragnall, two foreigners come asking for Macumazana—that is, asking for Allan Quatermain by the name he used among the Africans. The two visitors are Harut and Marut, priests and doctors of the White Kendah People and they have come to ask Allan Quatermain for his help. The White Kendah People are at war with the Black Kendah People who have an evil spirit for a god. And that spirit of the god resides in the largest elephant they have ever seen, an elephant that no man can kill—save Allan Quatermain. And now our intrepid hero must return to Africa and destroy this evil spirit before it kills every one of the White Kendah People.
The novel is the first in which Haggard deals with the theme of a person who loses his memory after a shocking event and then recovers it after a similar event.
The Ivory Child is perhaps the earliest example of the idea of the elephant graveyard being used in fiction.
THE IVORY CHILD
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