← Back

Elissa: or, The Doom of Zimbabwe

H. Rider Haggard

First published 1900
Type Novel

<br> <i>Elissa</i> is an attempt, difficult enough owing to the scantiness of the material left to us by time, to recreate the life of the ancient Phoenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, and, with the addition of the necessary love story, to suggest circumstances such as might have brought about or accompanied its fall at the hands of the surrounding savage tribes. --Author's Note, 1900, UK (<a href="/story/1142192/">see</a>)


First published as a serial in The Long Bow from 1898-02-02 to -06-08, with illustrations by F. H. Townsend. --VisualHaggard.org Two different 1900 collections contain the story with 8 full-page illustrations by Townsend, but the number of original illustrations is unknown. The reported serial dates span 19 Wednesdays; the novel contains 17 chapters. Long Bow (or Longbow) frequency of publication is unknown here, as is the number of serial parts.

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
1900 Black Heart and White Heart, and Other Stories Longmans, Green and Co. Collection 67
1900 Cover Elissa: The Doom of Zimbabwe / Black Heart and White Heart: A Zulu Idyll Longmans, Green and Co. Collection |1
1900 Black Heart and White Heart; and Elissa Tauchnitz Collection 83
1903 Black Heart and White Heart, and Other Stories Longmans, Green and Co. Collection 67
1917 Elissa: or, The Doom of Zimbabwe Hodder & Stoughton Novel
March 2006 Elissa: or, The Doom of Zimbabwe Project Gutenberg Novel