From the time of its first publication in 1885, King Solomon's Mines was the most popular, the most successful and the most widely imitated adventure/romance of the period. In his biography of Henry Rider Haggard, Morton Cohen describes the novel's impact on its first generation of readers:

There are a number of recurring plot functions that define the genre's overall shape. Typically, a group of English adventurers plans a journey into unexplored regions to revive their flagging spirits and fortunes. At or near their destination they encounter a relatively advanced white, or partly white, civilisation presided over by a queen, and living in caves or underground. In addition to this fictional lost race, the adventurers also meet more realistic native peoples who are often divided into warring factions. If one of the Englishmen falls in love with a native woman of either the lost or the native race, she usually dies.