Recent Acquisitions feature: African postcolonial literature collection

Our Recent Acquisitions Evening is tomorrow. For the past couple weeks we’ve been featuring recently acquired individual items. This feature shines a light on a notable collection of works we’ve recently acquired.

African postcolonial literature collection

This collection of African post-colonial literature includes works published from the 1950s through the 1980s, primarily titles published in English and French, all by African authors. Most were published in the United States, London, and Paris, with some titles published in countries across Africa including Ghana, Cameroon, and Nigeria.

The three decades beginning in the 1950s found African literature flourishing in a post-colonial moment. African writers took to the pen, telling or retelling stories of African life, often in the languages of the colonial powers who had occupied their nations. Their work had a significant impact on the novel in the West and represented a global turn in literature.

Many of these works have long been read in academic departments at UNC and can be found elsewhere in the library’s collections–but not as preservation copies. The Rare Book Collection has acquired this collection to preserve the artifactual history of these important works, documenting how these works were marketed for a mass audience.


This collection and many other items will be on display at the Rare Book Collection’s Recent Acquisitions Evening, a not-under-glass display of some of the Collection’s notable acquisitions. We hope you’ll join us on March 22 for the unique opportunity to see these remarkable items up close.

Recent Acquisitions feature: Phantasmion

Our Recent Acquisitions Evening is tomorrow. Here’s one more fascinating item that will be on display — this one offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a 19th-century woman writer of increasing relevance.

Phantasmion

Sara Coleridge was a talented writer and translator whose work is often overshadowed by the biographical fact of her parentage: Her father was literary giant Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Many critics consider her Phantasmion, first published in 1837, to be an early precursor to the modern fantasy novel. Coleridge’s life has been little studied, though there has been increasing scholarly interest in her since the 2007 publication of many of her poems, the majority of them newly-discovered.

Phantasmion

This extensively annotated volume of Phantasmion holds special significance because its vast marginalia was written by Coleridge as a long letter to Aubrey de Vere, an Irish poet who Coleridge formed a close friendship with after the death of her husband. In it, she offers a look into her inner life, including remembrances of growing up in England’s Lake District, the anxieties of growing up with a famous writer for a father, and her experiences as an opium addict. More than just a presentation copy, this book represents a unique record of female authorship, written in Coleridge’s characteristically eloquent style.


See this remarkable volume and more at the Rare Book Collection’s Recent Acquisitions Evening, a not-under-glass display of some of the Collection’s notable acquisitions. We hope you’ll join us on March 22 for the unique opportunity to see these incredible items up close.