She

She is an adventure novel by the English writer H. Rider Haggard, published in 1887. It introduced the character Ayesha, who returns in several of his later books, including She and Allan.

The story sends an expedition deep into pre-colonial Africa, where the travellers come upon a lost civilisation and its ruler, an immortal queen of great beauty and greater authority. She has been waiting for two thousand years for the man she believes she once killed and who she thinks has returned, and the encounter gives the book its central tension: the visitors have firearms, maps and the confidence of their age, and none of it is of any use against someone who has lived longer than their country has existed. Haggard wrote the novel as one of the first of the lost world romances, and its mixture of exploration, romance and the supernatural set the pattern for a great deal of what followed.

Haggard had spent several years in southern Africa and used the settings he knew as the starting point for stories that were written quickly and read very widely in their own day.