Sir Henry Rider Haggard was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and the creator of the Lost World literary genre. His stories, situated at the lighter end of the scale of Victorian literature, continue to be popular and influential. He was also involved in agricultural reform and improvement in the British Empire. "The Way of the Spirit" is a novel centring on sexuality and its renunciation, but with a voyage both spatial and spiritual and an isolated community in Egypt that approximates a lost race.