King Solomon's Mines

King Solomon's Mines is an 1885 novel by the English Victorian adventure writer H. Rider Haggard, published by Cassell and Company. It tells of an expedition through an unexplored region of Africa by a group of adventurers led by Allan Quatermain in search of the missing brother of one of the party.

Haggard is reported to have written the book in a short period, between six and sixteen months, on a bet with his brother that he could match Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and the publisher's material says it became an immediate bestseller by appealing to contemporary excitement about the unexplored regions of Africa. It was published in September 1885, with billboards and posters around London calling it the most amazing book ever written.

The novel is usually described as the genesis of the lost world genre, one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa, and an influence on writers including Arthur Conan Doyle and H. P. Lovecraft. It is also the first of fourteen novels and four short stories Haggard wrote about Allan Quatermain. The main line of the plot is an expedition, and the treasure it names is the reason the party takes the risk.