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  • A Select Index to South African Literature in English
  • Nancy J. Schmidt (bio)
A Select Index to South African Literature in English, coord. and ed. Debbie Landman. NELM Index 6. Grahamstown: National English Literary Museum, 1996. iv + 313 pp. ISBN 1-874941-10-6 paper.

This volume is the sixth in an annual series based on the holdings of the National English Literary Museum (NELM) covering publications from 1995 written in English or translated from other languages into English by South African authors that “aims to present the core of South African English literature and related critical material” (1). It covers poetry, drama, fiction, essays, diaries, memoirs, biographies, autobiographies, bibliographies, criticism, South African theses and dissertations, unpublished conference papers, and selected “substantial” press cuttings from the NELM collection. There are separate author and subject sections for adult and children’s anthologies and collections are included. The sources indexed are listed in an appendix, and if the 1995 issues of a journal had not been received, this is indicated in the appendix.

The bibliography is arranged in 45 sections by genre within author and subject sections for adult and children’s literature. Young adult literature is included in the adult literature section, which also includes simplified editions for new adult readers. The entries follow standard bibliographic format, except there is no date of publication unless the material was published in some year other than 1995. ISBN numbers are included for books, along with information for some books from NELM cataloging records, such as limited editions and signed copies. The most useful feature of the author sections is the listing of individual titles from collections, e.g., titles within volumes of Readers Digest Condensed Books, stories, poems, and plays within collections and published in journals and newspapers. To obtain the complete citation for materials published within an anthology or collection, the appendix of monographs and anthologies indexed (which [End Page 227] has the erroneous running title “newspapers scanned”) must be consulted. The inclusion of reviews of plays that have been performed, regardless of whether they have been published, also is quite useful.

The name and title indexes are essential for finding material that is divided into so many subject sections. The title index includes titles of all individual works, including poems and stories published in collections and journals. The name index covers the bibliographic entries, but not the appendix of literary awards for South African writing in English. The difficulty of defining who is a South African writer is exemplified by the inclusion of Kole Omotoso in the list of award winners. Although Omotoso currently lives in South Africa, he is well-known internationally as a Nigerian writer.

A Select Index to South African Literature in English does not claim to be comprehensive and needs to be supplemented by a variety of sources, including Dorothy Driver’s annual bibliography in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature; MLA International Bibliography; International African Bibliography; and Dissertation Abstracts International, among others. The claim that the index provides a core of South African published literary material is more justified than that it provides a core of critical material. South African literary scholarship is published worldwide in English and many other languages. German and Scandinavian scholarship in English are barely represented and dissertations from the US, UK, and India are not included, for example. A Select Index to South African Literature in English has become more comprehensive over the years, and it is one of the major sources that should be consulted for research on South African literature.

Nancy J. Schmidt

Nancy J. Schmidt has retired from her position as Librarian for African Studies and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University-Bloomington.

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