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The Ivory Child — cover
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Aeneas Press edition 20th Century First published 1916

The Ivory Child

by H. Rider Haggard 1856–1925

The book, and the century it came out of.

Quatermain is hired by a Norfolk gentleman to find his kidnapped wife, and the trail runs to a people beyond the Kendah desert who worship a white elephant, and to a priesthood that has been waiting for a man who can shoot. Haggard went to South Africa at nineteen and helped raise the Union Jack over the Transvaal; the elephant hunt in this one is the best sustained action he wrote. Illustrated with 42 full-page plates — paintings by Pernhart, Bierstadt and Church among them.

Now I, Allan Quatermain, come to the story of what was, perhaps, one of the strangest of all the adventures which have befallen me in the course of a life that so far can scarcely be called tame or humdrum.
The first sentence of The Ivory Child
A note on this edition

The Ivory Child, by H. Rider Haggard, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.

It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.

The edition
Format
Ebook
Extent
about 328 pages
Reading time
about 7 hours
Illustrations
Full-page plates, credited
Text
Complete, unabridged
Language
en
This edition
2026
ISBN
9785486821820
The plates

42 paintings are bound into this edition

Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.

Uitzicht op de Großglockner, Marko Pernhart
Uitzicht op de Großglockner Marko Pernhart 1857
The Forest of Fontainebleau, Anton Teichlein
The Forest of Fontainebleau Anton Teichlein 1857
Winterscape, Otto Bache
Winterscape Otto Bache 1857
Sailing Ships in the Sound south of Kronborg, Carl Frederik Sørensen
Sailing Ships in the Sound south of Kronborg Carl Frederik Sørensen 1857
Bison, Albert Bierstadt
Bison Albert Bierstadt 1858
Landscape, John William Casilear
Landscape John William Casilear 1852
The setting

A page from this edition

Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.

A page of The Ivory Child as set for this edition
The opening of a chapter
A page of The Ivory Child as set for this edition
A page where a plate falls

Both photographed from the finished volume.

Colophon

The Ivory Child, first published 1916, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Adventure & the Sea shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.

Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785486821820, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.

Before you buy

Questions readers ask

Is this the whole of The Ivory Child?
Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
What exactly did you change?
The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. H. Rider Haggard's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
Are the pictures really in the book?
Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
How long is it?
About 328 pages, which is roughly about 7 hours of reading.
What do I actually get?
An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
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The Ivory Child
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