Saturday Rave: King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard.

King Solomon's Mines has sold over eighty three million copies (and that figure only goes up to 1965).

It's one of the best-selling books of all time.

So, what makes a best-seller?

Well, the book's publisher, Cassell, gave it a big push, describing it on billboards as The Most Amazing Book Ever Written. That must have helped.

The book also established a new genre of "Lost World" books, and at the time (1885) there was much popular curiosity about the mysteries of the interiors of the darker continents.

But is King Solomon's Mines a work of polished phrase, psychological insight, and carefully honed prose?

Well, here's a chunk of the book:

“Listen! What is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one's road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner.” 

...so that would be a no, then.

Well, was the book written as the result of the deepest philosophical conviction?

Nope: it was written for a bet. Rider Haggard's brother bet him five shillings he couldn't write a book half as good as R L Stevenson's Treasure Island, and King Solomon's Mines was the result.

Well, then, it must have been the result of huge and careful artistry and application. You know the idea: genius is ninety nine per cent perspiration and all that.

Nope again. The whole thing might have been written in six weeks, and definitely didn't take more than sixteen.

So: what makes an enormous, earth-shattering best-seller?

I only wish I knew, quite frankly. 

I wish I knew.

Word To Use Today: mine. This word is Old French and appeared in English in the 1200s. Before that it was probably Celtic. The Welsh word mwyn means ore or mine.