Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set largely in Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. His stories, situated at the lighter end of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. Barbara Who Came Back is the story of Septimus Walrond, who was returning from a professional visit to a distant cottage upon the coast of East Anglia. His errand had been sad, to baptise the dying infant of a fisherman, which just as the rate was finished wailed once feebly and expired in his arms.