Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa

Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of 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 the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; "iimbongi," orature and the canon; book-collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; 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. "Book History" or "Histories of the Book" has been an important and influential field in European and North American scholarship for at least three decades. This volume showcases the "History of the Book" within a South African context and its significance in South Africa's emerging studies of print culture.

Andrew van der Vlies is Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London, and Research Associate in the Department of English Literature at Rhodes University, Grahamstown. His areas of expertise include South African literatures and literary cultures, Anglophone postcolonial writing, and print and book histories. He is a literary critic, historian and cultural sociologist, and author of South African Textual Cultures (2010). He reviews regularly for various publications such as the Times Literary Supplement and Art South Africa.