The period 1948–76 is arguably the most significant in Afrikaans literature, a time that coincided with greater social privileges, better education and the rapid urbanisation of white Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. The electoral triumph of Afrikaner nationalism in 1948 enhanced the place of the Afrikaans language in the civil service, the educational system and the economy. New Afrikaans publishing houses were established and sustained through favourable changes in the macro-political and economic conditions of the country, symbiotic relationships with the major Nationalist-supporting Afrikaans newspaper houses and printers, youthful entrepreneurship and, most importantly, the fostering of close relationships with the decision makers in the newly established apartheid education system for which purpose-made schoolbooks were produced (see Steyn, ‘Eerste Dekades’; ‘Nederige Begin’). It was a time of the embourgeoisement of the Afrikaner, a social change that clearly resonated in Afrikaans literature.

The cultural consequences of this political ascendancy included early attempts at stabilising and canonising Afrikaner literary culture, such as the ambitious three-volume series Kultuurgeskiedenis van die Afrikaner (Cultural History of the Afrikaner, 1948–51); a new literary history, Perspektief en Profiel (Perspective and Profile, 1951; since 1998 updated into three volumes) and a new anthology, Groot Verseboek (Great Book of Verse, 1951). The same need for stocktaking is also reflected in the comprehensive literary histories of Dekker (Afrikaanse Literatuurgeskiedenis [Afrikaans Literary History, 1935]), Antonissen (Schets van den Ontwikkelingsgang der Zuid-Afrikaansche Letterkunde [Sketch of the Development of South African Literature, 1946]) and Kannemeyer (Geskiedenis van die Afrikaanse Literatuur [History of Afrikaans Literature, 1978, 1983]).