She

“remarkable imaginative power”

The Spectator, 15 January 1887, p. 78

• Complete 1887 Longmans first-edition text, checked against the page images
• Fourteen scenes newly drawn after the Graphic serial illustrations of 1886–87
• Facsimiles of the Sherd of Amenartas from the 1887 edition
• Publisher’s note, author profile and afterword
• Every departure from the 1887 printing listed at the end of the book

For more than two thousand years, the secret has endured.

A fragment of ancient pottery, inscribed with the testimony of a woman long dead, carries across the centuries a command that no generation of her descendants has dared to fulfil. When the scholar Horace Holly and his young ward, Leo Vincey, inherit this extraordinary relic, they discover the traces of a history reaching back to the forgotten kingdoms of antiquity, to a forbidden love, and to a mysterious woman whose existence appears to defy the laws of mortal life.

Their search leads them towards the remote interior of Africa, beyond treacherous waters and hostile wilderness, into the dominion of the Amahagger and the immense sepulchral ruins of Kôr, where the monuments of a vanished civilisation stand in solemn witness to the destruction of all earthly greatness.

Yet among these relics of a dead world there reigns a sovereign who has outlived the kingdoms of men.

Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed, commands with an authority before which warriors tremble and learned men find their knowledge unequal to the mystery confronting them. Possessed of incomparable beauty, formidable intelligence and memories extending across the ages, she has awaited the fulfilment of an ancient destiny while generations have risen and perished beyond the boundaries of her hidden realm.

And somewhere beneath the mountains burns the mysterious Fire of Life, before whose terrible promise the distinction between mortality and eternity itself appears uncertain.

First published in book form in 1887, She stands among the supreme imaginative achievements of Victorian literature: a magnificent romance of lost civilisations, immortal love, sovereign power and the everlasting mysteries of antiquity.

This AETERNUS edition follows the first Longmans book edition of 1887, preserving the original documentary framework and the facsimiles of the Sherd of Amenartas.

AMBER SERIES · AETERNUS

This AETERNUS edition follows the first Longmans book edition of 1887, preserving the original documentary framework and the facsimiles of the Sherd of Amenartas.