An explanation of the unique role of the book and book collecting in South Africa due to the apartheid

This book explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of disciplinary perspectives- historical, bibliographic, literary-critical, sociological, and cultural studies. The essays collected here, by leading international scholars, address a range of topics as varied as: the role of print cultures in contests over the nature of the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; iimbongi, orature and the canon; book- collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms; books in war; how the fates of South African texts, locally and globally, have been affected by their material instantiations; photocomics and other ephemera; censorship, during and after apartheid; books about art and books as art; local academic publishing; and the challenge of 'book history' for literary and cultural criticism in contemporary South Africa.

Andrew van der Vlies

1 Print, Text and Books in South Africa Andrew van der Vlies 2.1 Metonymies of Lead: Bullets, Type and Print Culture in South African Missionary Colonialism Le on de Kock 2.2 "Spread Far and Wide over the Surface of the Earth": Evangelical Reading Formations and the Rise of a Transnational Public Sphere: The Case of the Cape Town Ladies' Bible Association Isabel Hofmeyr 2.3 Textual Circuits and Intimate Relations: A Community of Letters across the Indian Ocean Meg Samuelson 3.1 Deneys Reitz and Imperial Co-option John Gouws 3.2 "Consequential Changes": Daphne Rooke's Mittee in America and South Africa Luc y Valerie Graham 3.3 Oprah's Paton, or South Africa and the Globalisation of Suffering Rita Barnard 4.1 In (or From) the Heart of the Country: Local and Global Lives of Coetzee's Anti-pastoral Andrew van der Vlies 4.2 Under Local Eyes: The South African Publishing Context of J. M. Coetzee's Foe Jarad Zimbler 4.3 Limber: The Flexibilities of Post-Nobel Coetzee Patrick Denman Flanery 5.1 Colin Rae's Malaboch: The Power of the Book in the (Mis)Representation of KgaluSi Sekete Mmaleboho Lize Kriel 5.2 "Send Your Books on Active Service": The Books for Troops Scheme during the Second World War, 1939-1945 Archie L. Dick 5.3 From The Origin of Language to a Language of Origin: A Prologue to the Grey Collection Hedley Twidle 6.1 The Image of the Book in Xhosa Oral Poetry Jeff Opland 6.2 Written Out, Writing In: Orature in the South African Literary Canon Deborah Seddon 6.3 Not Western: Race, Reading and the South African Photocomic Lily Saint 7.1 The Politics of Obscenity: Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Apartheid State Peter D. McDonald 7.2 "Deeply Racist, Superior and Patronising": South African Literature Education and the "Gordimer Incident" Margriet van der Waal 7.3 Begging the Questions: Producing Shakespeare for Post-apartheid South African Schools Natasha Distiller 8.1 The Rise of the Surface: Emerging Questions for Reading and Criticism in South Africa Sarah Nuttall 8.2 Sailing a Smaller Ship: Publishing Art Books in South Africa Bronwyn Law -Viljoen 8.3 The University as Publisher: Towards a History of South African University Presses Elizabeth le Roux