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. Smith and the Pharaohs, the title tale of Collected Tales I concerns a budding Egyptologist who is accidentally locked up one night in the Cairo Museum. Falling asleep, he dreams that he is put on trial by the ghosts of Egypt's pharaohs and queens.