Reproduction of the original: Her Benny by Silas K. Hocking

This book is a little gem. It was first published in 1880 by a Cornish Minister who upped sticks to bang his drum up in the 'grim North', ( including 3 years in Liverpool, which is where this story is primarily set ). Despite the good man of the cloth earning only a fraction of what he should have done, this book gave Silas K Hocking his place in History, as the first author to sell more than a million books in his own life time. Considering the traditional rush from the cemetery to buy all sorts of works of art, music and literature by even the most obscure writers/artists in the event of their passing on, this was indeed an achievement. One read of the first chapter will make you understand why.

This book is about selected Victorian texts and authors that in many cases have never before been subject to sustained scholarly attention. Taking inspiration from the pioneeringly capacious approach to the hidden hinterland of Victorian fiction adopted by scholars like John Sutherland and Franco Moretti, this energetically revisionist volume takes advantage of recent large-scale digitisation projects that allow unprecedented access to hitherto neglected literary texts and archives. Blending lively critical engagement with individual texts and close attention to often surprising trends in the production and reception of prose fiction across the Victorian era, this book will be of use to anyone interested in re-evaluating the received meta-narratives of Victorian literary history. With an afterword by John Sutherland

The yellow god, originally published in 1908, is another of Haggard's African novels, and it features many elements of the fantastic, such as a magic mask and fetish objects, a lost race, reincarnation, and an immortal woman whose many husbands she has preserved as mummies.