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Popular Literature for an African Elite
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Extract
The emergence of a literature in English in Nigeria is usually described as a rapid post-war phenomenon, an unexpected flowering of creative energy which took scarcely more than two decades to produce rich, ripe fruit. According to most published reports, this literature was born suddenly in 1952 out of the pregnant thumb of Amos Tutuola; was nursed through a wobbly infancy by Cyprian Ekwensi, T. M. Aluko, and Onuora Nzekwu; was guided through a magnificent adolescence by Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Christopher Okigbo, and their numerous university-trained followers; was tested by a civil war which left several casualties but no diminution of the will to write; and was later restored to normal prolificacy by the assiduous application of old and new talents.
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Page 472 note 1 It is perhaps worth noting that most of these writers took up some form of editorial work later in their career. Michael Echeruo was responsible for the first and only number of The African Writer in 1962, and a special issue of The Coach in 1971. Black Orpheus had as co-editor Wole Soyinka from 1960 to 1963, and J. P. Clark from 1968 to 1972. Chinua Achebe edited a campus radical magazine called Nsukkascope at the University of Nigeria during 1971–2, and is still responsible for Okike, a literary magazine he founded in 1971; he has also served for a decade as an advisory editor for Heinemann's African Writers Series.
Page 473 note 1 For an early article on these publications, see Anon, . [Ramsaran, J. A.], ‘Nigerian School Journals: key to nationhood’, in The Times Educational Supplement (London), 25 04 1958, p. 639.Google Scholar I was able to consult many of these journals at the library of the University of Ibadan while doing research in Nigeria during 1972–3 on a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Page 473 note 2 This estimate is based on information in Nigerian Periodicals and Newspapers, 1950–1970 (Ibadan, 1971), p. 49.Google Scholar Information on other journals cited in this article can also be found in this source.
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Page 480 note 5 A. C. Achebe, ‘Hiawatha’, ibid. IV, 2, 29 November 1952, p. 3.
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