content: H. Rider Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines" is at once a ripping adventure yarn and a celebration of Victorian values. The book - the first of the "Lost World" genre - features at trio of English adventurers: the elephant hunter Allan Quatermain, an aristocrat Sir Henry Curtis and his companion Captain Good. Curtis wants to find his brother who was last seen leaving to find the mine of the title.Curtis is a shining example of the aristocracy - brave and virtuous - a knight in every sense of the word. Good and Quatermain are also fine Englishment who know their place. Haggard was certainly in favour of the established order. To modern eyes the book is incredibly racist and misogynistic but compared to other literature of the time is positively progressive.You can certainly see where the inspiration for "Raiders of the Lost Ark" came from.