One of the most important collections of African literature in the world is on its way from the United States to Durban to form part of a new Centre for African Literary Studies, the University of Natal said on Tuesday.
It said rare first editions signed by giants of African literature such as Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Nadine Gordimer, journals from throughout Africa, and full runs of Black Orpheus, were part of the 13 000 books, journals, and rare tape and video material coming back to Africa.
Bibliographer Hans Zell, who was asked to describe and value the set, called it ”a rare and quite unique collection, unparalleled in the world”.
The university said the funding to bring the collection to Africa and to start the new centre had been provided by global grant-maker Atlantic Philanthropies, the national arts and culture department, the Anglo American Chairman’s Fund and the University of Natal Research Fund.
It said American academic, Prof Bernth Lindfors from the University of Austin in Texas, had built up the collection over the last 40 years.
Lindfors is considered the most resourceful bibliographer of African literature in the world. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of literature from the University of Natal in 2002.
”Every four years since 1979, Lindfors has edited the bibliography, Black African Literature in English, which has been described as being so comprehensive a volume ‘that anyone wanting to do any work of any substance on contemporary Black African Literature in English will simply have to get access to it”’.
The university said that while teaching in Kenya in the 1960s, Lindfors found himself witnessing the emergence of the new national literature of independent Africa. He went on to dedicate himself to fighting for the status and respectability of African literature in the North American academe.
”And he was determined that his collection should be based in Africa once it left him, for he did not want this rich patrimony of Africa’s intellectual capital to be largely unavailable to African scholars,” it said.
Working closely with his former student, David Attwell — until recently professor and director of English studies at the university, Lindfors offered the collection first to the university.
It will form the heart of the new centre expected to be operating at the university’s Pietermaritzburg campus within a year.
”This will provide a much-needed world resource for the study of African literatures; a key regional and national research centre; a springboard for new African literary scholarship; and a dynamic centre for colloquia and conferences.
”It will also add significantly to the research potential for the humanities and, in particular, African literature at the university itself.” – Sapa