Paul Kruger: Toesprake en korrespondensie van 1881–1900 probeer om die klem te plaas op minder bekende briefwisseling en optredes van Kruger om sodoende ’n verteenwoordigende beeld van staatspresident Kruger se werksaamhede en standpunte aan te bied. Die teks is deeglik toegelig met ophelderende voetnote. Verder is ’n algemene inleiding, agtergrondsinligting en -ontleding verskaf by elke toepaslike breër tydperk in Kruger se lewe tot 1900.

Die beeld wat van Kruger na vore kom uit ’n deeglike ontleding van veral sy minder bekende korrespondensie en toesprake, verskil dikwels ingrypend van dit wat oor ’n lang tydperk in publikasies oor hom aangebied is. Hierdie publikasie vervul daarom ’n belangrike behoefte: Dit stel die leser in staat om regstreeks deur die lees en bestudering van Kruger se standpunte tot eie en nuwe gevolgtrekkings te kom.

The remarkable, and often touching, friendship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts is a rich study in contrasts.

In youth they occupied very different worlds: Churchill, the rambunctious and thrusting young aristocrat; Smuts, the ascetic, philosophical Cape farm boy who would go on to Cambridge. Brought together first as enemies in the Anglo-Boer War, and later as allies in the First World War, the men forged a friendship which spanned the first half of the twentieth century and endured until Smuts’s death in 1950. Richard Steyn, author of Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness, examines this close friendship through two world wars and the intervening years, drawing on a maze of archival and secondary sources including letters, telegrams and the voluminous books written about both men.

This is a fascinating account of two remarkable men in war and peace: one the leader of the Empire, the other the leader of a small fractious member of that Empire who nevertheless rose to global prominence.

Joan Collins has been a diarist from the age of twelve, writing enthusiastically over the years. She dictated most of these entries in real time into a mini-tape recorder at the end of the day, and now she is spilling the beans - well, nearly all of them.

What you will discover was written when Joan 'felt like it' between 1989 and 2009. Whether it is an encounter with a superstar or a member of the Royal Family, or her keen and honest insights into other celebrities at dinner parties and events, Joan is honest and unapologetic.

Taking us on a dazzling tour around the globe - from exclusive restaurants in Los Angeles to the glittering beaches of St Tropez, from dinner parties in London to galas in New York City - some of the characters you will meet in these pages include Rod Stewart, Princess Margaret, Donald Trump, Michael Caine, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, Rupert Everett, Roger Moore, Shirley MacLaine, Andrew Lloyd Webber and many more.

Her diaries are intimate and witty, and they pull no punches, with NO apologies to anyone mentioned in them!

The most significant nonfiction writings of Zoë Wicomb, one of South Africa’s leading authors and intellectuals, are collected here for the first time in a single volume.

This compilation features critical essays on the works of such prominent South African writers as Bessie Head, Nadine Gordimer, Njabulo Ndebele, and J.M. Coetzee, as well as writings on gender politics, race, identity, visual art, sexuality and a wide range of other cultural and political topics. Also included are a reflection on Nelson Mandela and a revealing interview with Wicomb.

In these essays, written between 1990 and 2013, Wicomb offers insight on her nation’s history, policies, and people. In a world in which nationalist rhetoric is on the rise and diversity and pluralism are the declared enemies of right-wing populist movements, her essays speak powerfully to a wide range of international issues.

What is it like to be born dirt-poor in South Africa? Clinton Chauke knows, having been raised alongside his two sisters in a remote village bordering the Kruger National Park and a squatter camp outside Pretoria. Clinton is a young village boy when awareness dawns of how poor his family really is: there’s no theft in the village because there’s absolutely nothing to steal. But fire destroys the family hut, and they decide to move back to the city. There he is forced to confront the rough-and-tumble of urban life as a ‘bumpkin’.

He is Venda, whereas most of his classmates speak Zulu or Tswana and he has to face their ridicule while trying to pick up two or more languages as fast as possible. With great self-awareness, Clinton negotiates the pitfalls and lifelines of a young life: crime and drugs, football, religion, friendship, school, circumcision and, ultimately, becoming a man. Throughout it all, he displays determination as well as a self-deprecating humour that will keep you turning the pages till the end.

Clinton’s story is one that will give you hope that even in a sea of poverty there are those that refuse to give up and, ultimately, succeed.

Ter viering van Dolf van Niekerk se negentigste verjaarsdag verskyn hier ’n versameling filosofiese, bepeinsende en besinnende essays uit die pen van een van Afrikaans se meesterskrywers.

Vanaf sy vroegste gewaarwordinge tot sy kennismaking met groot filosowe soos Nietzsche, Kant en Hegel op universiteit en in sy daaglikse handel en wandel daarna: altyd maar bly die bewustheid van ’n onsigbare “iets” by hierdie aristokratiese gees – en ’n soeke na ’n beter verstaan van dít wat “die sterretyd en die menstyd aan mekaar verbind”.

In 48 essays wat die biografiese tydperk tussen ongeveer sy vyfde en twintigste lewensjaar dek, skryf ’n deurleefde, wyse Van Niekerk oor sy vroegste herinnerings aan sy geboortedorp, sy gesin en sy helderste herinnerings aan die plekke en mense wat hom gevorm het tot die mens wat hy geword het. Want, soos wat hy in die verhaal “Die skinkbord” skryf: Jy kan net wees wie jy is, en jy is wat jy word.

In a telegram dated 29 April 1963, thirty-year-old Afrikaans poet Ingrid Jonker thanks André Brink, a young novelist of twenty-eight, for flowers and a letter he sent her. In the more than two hundred letters that followed this telegram, one of South African literature’s most famous love affairs unfolds. Jonker’s final letter to Brink is dated 18 April 1965. She drowned herself in the ocean at Three Anchor Bay three months later.

More than fifty years on, this poignant, often stormy relationship still grips readers’ imaginations.

In December 2014, three months before his death on 6 February 2015, André Brink offered these never-before-seen letters, as well as personal photographs, for publication.

In hierdie versamelbundel is daar ‘n groep uiteenlopende mense gevra om elk ‘n onafhanklike essay te skryf na aanleiding van ‘n Bybelteks.

Daar is skrywers, ekonome, musikante, akademici en joernaliste. Die enigste voorwaardes was dat dit persone moet wees wat nie meer kerklik betrokke en/ of ‘n dominee of teoloog is nie. Baie essays is bloot verhale, vertellings, reise of verduidelikings wat met ‘n teks verbind kan word.

Ons almal is medereisigers in hierdie verbygaande wêreldse bestel. Kom ons luister met ‘n oop gemoed na mekaar. Dán staan ons ‘n kans om te verstaan, te begryp, eerder as om te oordeel.

Van die bekende en bekroonde skrywers wat deelneem aan hierdie projek is onder andere Jurie van den Heever, Annelie Botes, Dana Snyman, Pik Botha, Heinz Modler, Lizette Rabe, Dawie Roodt, Rachelle Greeff, Piet Croukamp, Joan Hambidge, Koos Kombuis, Karin Brynard, Jean Oosthuizen, Christine Barkhuizen Le Roux, Lina Spies, Valda Jansen, Valiant Swart, Nathan Trantraal, Churchil Naude, Riku Lätti en Luke Alfred.

Catapulted into national prominence with the release of her multiple-award-winning debut album, Zandisile, in 2005, Simphiwe Dana has since carved a place for herself as one of the most significant artists of her generation using a unique combination of jazz, rap and traditional music. Hailed by the media as 'South Africa's Jazz Diva No#1' and 'the best thing to happen to Afro-Soul music since Miriam Makeba', Dana is listened to and loved both locally and abroad.

A feminist exploration of the public lives of performer Simphiwe Dana - a rebel with several causes, in eight essays, award winning author, Prof Gqola brilliantly shows why Dana is arguably one of the most significant cultural figures working in contemporary South Africa today.

Fluctuating public responses to Ms Dana show us something about South African sensitivities to Blackness, femininity, language and the imagination.

‘Miskien issit omdat poverty my define en nie die racial politics vannie land ie.’

Wit issie ’n colour nie is ’n versameling verhale oor grootword en die lewe in die buitewyke van die Kaapse Vlakte. Dit dek identiteit, rassepolitiek, sosio- ekonomiese kwessies en bruin kultuur, en bevraagteken die Suid-Afrika waarin ons ons bevind. Dit is gevul met galgehumor, rou eerlikheid en hartverskeurende vertellings van pogings om die lewe op die Vlakte te navigeer. Hierdie versameling is diep persoonlik en ’n ontstellend waar weergawe van die lewe aan die ander kant van die spoor, geskryf in Kaapse Afrikaans.

These essays bring to life many facets of Magona’s personal history, her deepest convictions, love for her country and belief in her ability to activate change. They are a meaningful supplement to her fictional works, while offering insightful responses to the conditions that inspired them.

Sindiwe Magona is a celebrated South African writer, storyteller and motivational speaker known mainly for her autobiographies, biographies, novels, short stories, poetry and children’s books. I Write the Yawning Void is a collection of essays that highlight her engagement with writing that span the transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid period and addresses themes such as HIV/Aids, language and culture, home and belonging.

Magona worked as a teacher, domestic worker and spent two decades working for the United Nations in the United States of America. She has received many awards for her fearless writing ‘truth to power’. Her written work is often informed by her lived experience of being a black woman resisting subjugation and poverty.

These essays bring to life many facets of Magona’s personal history as well as her deepest convictions, her love for her country and despair at the problems that continue to plague it, and her belief in her ability to activate change. They demonstrate Magona’s engaging storytelling and mastery of the essay form which serve as meaningful supplements to her fictional works, while simultaneously offering insightful responses to the conditions that inspired them.

Engela Linde-Van Rooyen, ervare redakteur, letterkundige, verhaalredakteur en veral befaamde skrywer. Haar liefdesverhale, jeugverhale en kontreikuns het haar 'n huishoudelike naam gemaak lank voor haar meesterwerk - en toevallig haar honderdste boek - Vuur op die horison verskyn het (laasgenoemde was op die kortlys vir die M-Net-prys).

Geagte skrywer is 'n keur uit die briewe wat sy as verhaalredakteur aan skrywers geskryf het wat verhale aan haar gestuur het.

From urgently scribbling out his debut Killing Floor in pencil (the stub of which he still owns), to taking a step back with Blue Moon, and everything in between, here are 24 honest, witty and wise personal reflections on his life and work, crafted across decades.

Whether it is through Lee’s moving account of meeting a fan years after her mother brought her to a book signing; facing his first computer and the coming of the internet; writing about New York just before – and just after – 9/11, to later seeing his novels adapted for the big screen, each riveting piece deftly evokes where he was psychologically and physically when he wrote each novel.

Lee has clearly felt unwavering gratitude for his readers since 1997. And these stories were originally designed for fans of Reacher who may be interested in a ‘behind-the-scenes’ – or, in Lee’s words: ‘why the books turned out the way they did’.

But this collection is also so much more. It is the story of a man who once put pencil to paper in an attempt to turn his luck around . . . and who made every word count.

Pots and Poetry and other essays is a collection of some of South African philosopher Martin Versfeld’s most popular works, as well as three previously uncollected essays. Versfeld enriches and enlarges our understanding of the world by synthesising Eastern and Western thought – along the way demonstrating that Plato and Confucius were brothers in arms – and by taking a stance on the environment that is far ahead of its time.

Early in his career, the composer Arnold Schoenberg maintained correspondence with many notable figures: Gustav Mahler, Heinrich Schenker, Guido Adler, Arnold Rose, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, to name a few. In this volume of Oxford's Schoenberg in Words series, Ethan Haimo and Sabine Feisst present English translations of the entirety of Arnold Schoenberg's early correspondence, from the earliest extant letters in 1891 to those written in the aftermath of the controversial premieres of his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 7, and the Kammersymphonie, Op. 9. The letters provide a wealth of information on many of the crucial stages in Schoenberg's early career, offering invaluable insights into his daily life and working habits. New details emerge about his activities at Wolzogen's Buntes Theater in Berlin, his frequently confrontational interactions with his first publisher (Dreililien Verlag), the reactions of friends and critics to the premieres of his works, his role in the founding of the Vereinigung schaffender Tonkunstler, his activities as a teacher, and his (all too often unsuccessful) attempts to convince musicians to perform his music. Presented alongside the editors' extensive running commentary, the more than 300 letters in this volume create a vivid picture of the young Schoenberg and his times.

The first single-volume anthology of Brecht's writings on both art and politics This volume contains new translations to extend our image of one of the twentieth century's most entertaining and thought provoking writers on culture, aesthetics and politics. Here are a cross-section of Brecht's wide-ranging thoughts which offer us an extraordinary window onto the concerns of a modern world in four decades of economic and political disorder. The book is designed to give wider access to the experience of a dynamic intellect, radically engaged with social, political and cultural processes. Each section begins with a short essay by the editors introducing and summarising Brecht's thought in the relevant year.

The John Donne volume in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series offers a wholly new edition of Donne's verse and prose. It consists of a selection of the compositions that circulated in manuscript or in print form during Donne's lifetime. In keeping with the approach of the series, the texts are presented in chronological order and the text chosen is, wherever possible, the text of the first published version. Each text is paired with a generous complement of historical and textual annotation, which enables the present day reader to access the excitement with which Donne's contemporaries, his first readers, discovered his famous and incomparable originality, audacity, ingenuity, and wit. The edition incorporates new directions and emphases in scholarly editing that are foregrounded in the 21st-Century Oxford Authors series, such as the history of readership and the history of texts as material objects.

After the battle of Antietam in 1862, Harriet Eaton traveled to Virginia from her home in Portland, Maine, to care for soldiers in the Army of the Potomac. Portland's Free Street Baptist Church, with liberal ties to abolition, established the Maine Camp Hospital Association and made the widowed Eaton its relief agent in the field. One of many Christians who believed that patriotic activism could redeem the nation, Eaton quickly learned that war was no respecter of religious principles. Doing the work of nurse and provisioner, Eaton tended wounded men and those with smallpox and diphtheria during two tours of duty. She preferred the first tour, which ended after the battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, to the second, more sedentary, assignment at City Point, Virginia, in 1864. There the impositions of federal bureaucracy standardized patient care at the expense of more direct communication with soldiers. Eaton deplored the arrogance of U.S. Sanitary Commissioners whom she believed saw state benevolent groups as competitors for supplies. Eaton struggled with the disruptions of transience, scarcely sleeping in the same place twice, but found the politics of daily toil even more challenging. Conflict between Eaton and co-worker Isabella Fogg erupted almost immediately over issues of propriety; the souring working conditions leading to Fogg's ouster from Maine state relief efforts by late 1863. Though Eaton praised some of the surgeons with whom she worked, she labeled others charlatans whose neglect had deadly implications for the rank and file. If she saw villainy, she also saw opportunities to convert soldiers and developed an intense spiritual connection with a private, which appears to have led to a postwar liaison. Published here for the first time, the uncensored nursing diary is a rarity among medical accounts of the war, showing Eaton to be an astute observer of human nature and not as straight-laced as we might have thought. This hardcover edition includes an extensive introduction from the editor, transcriptions of relevant letters and newspaper articles, and a thoroughly researched biographical dictionary of the people mentioned in the diary.

Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining work, The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, cultural habits, language, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising and news headlines. Annie Ernaux invents a form that is subjective and impersonal, private and communal, and a new genre - the collective autobiography - in order to capture the passing of time. At the confluence of autofiction and sociology, The Years is 'a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism' (New York Times), a monumental account of twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of one woman.

Widely recognized as Canada's finest literary humorist, Stephen Leacock was a prolific author, publishing over sixty books during his lifetime, in addition to countless articles and pamphlets. He was also a devoted correspondent, writing hundreds of letters to friends, relatives, and business associates. Illustrated with several original photographs, The Letters of Stephen Leacock brings together over 800 letters, most of them never before published. Together they give a vivid picture of one of the twentieth century's most distinguished men of letters, a man who was honest, compassionate, and committed to his craft. From the brief, unpolished lines he wrote as a boy to his father, to the final letters he wrote before his death, Leacock's correspondence reveals much about the man behind the humour: the devoted son, husband, and father; the distinguished McGill professor; the proud Canadian; the generous uncle; the social critic; and the private citizen consumed and deeply troubled by the two world wars. Fans of Leacock's many books of humour will find glimpses of his trademark wit in letters on subjects ranging from the Scottish penchant for whiskey to the beauty of the west. More than a humorist, Leacock was an intellectual and an educator who wrote serious works on many topics, including political economy, education, and social reform, and many of his strong views on these subjects are laid out plainly in letters to associates and friends. He was also an astute businessman, and was, as letters to numerous publishers show, a writer by profession. As Leacock himself wrote of his letters to a friend and associate, 'We wrote in the plain straighforward way only possible in such an interchange of letters, about what we thought of this new world that seemed to overwhelm us in our old age.' These are the letters of a gentleman, written with charm, grace, and humour, occassionally blunt and assertive in dealings with publishers, but - in keeping with his humour - never mean-spirited or designed to injure. Together, they represent a fascinating collection that will captivate anyone who enjoys Canadian fiction or history. David Staines has spent 15 years bringing together Leacock's letters, many of them from private collections in Britain, the United States, and Canada. His ten chapter introductions place these carefully selected and annotated letters in the context of Leacock's life and work.

A personal testimony detailing the life of a teenage patient in a tuberculosis hospital taken from his daily diary entries. Like others he was cooped up and restricted, while gratefully receiving care and treatment from surgeons and nursing staff under the watchful eye of strict yet sympathetic Sisters and Matrons. This is an entertaining read involving co-operation and modest revolt including nruse chasing, illicit pub crawls, and regular carpeting by the Ward Sister and Medical Superintendent. Yet accompanying the lighter moments is an important medical, social and personal record of the 1950s sanatorium experience.

Thomas Walsingham, a monk of St Albans, has been described as the last of the great medieval chroniclers. The St Albans Chronicle is arguably the most important account of English history to be written in England at this time. This volume contains the material which can be shown to have been written by Walsingham himself before 1400, and includes his highly individual account of such episodes as the Peasants' Revolt and the rise of Lollardy. This is the first modern edition, and it provides a facing-page English translation, substantial historical commentary, and textual notes.

Receive our Memories is a rare study of an epistolary relationship for individuals whose migration from Mexico has been looked at en masse, but not from such a personal and human angle. The heart of the book consists of eighty translated and edited versions of letters from Luz Moreno, a poor, uneducated Mexican sharecropper, to his daughter, a recent emigre to California, in the 1950s. These are contextualized and framed in light of immigration and labor history, the histories of Mexico and the United States in this period, and family history. Although Moreno's letters include many of the affective concerns and quotidian subject matter that are the heart and soul of most immigrant correspondence, they also reveal his deep attachment to a wider world that he has never seen. They include extensive discussions on the political events of his day (the Cold War, the Korean War, the atomic bomb, the conflict between Truman and MacArthur), ruminations on culture and religion (the role of Catholicism in the modern world, the dangers of Protestantism to Mexican immigrants to the United States), and extensive deliberations on the philosophical questions that would naturally preoccupy the mind of an elderly and sick man: Is life worth living? What is death? Will I be rewarded or punished in death? What does it mean to live a moral life? The thoughtfulness of Moreno's meditations and quantity of letters he penned, provide historians with the rare privilege of reading a part of the Mexican national narrative that, as Mexican author Elena Poniatowska notes, is usually "written daily, and daily erased."