In this blog, we discuss the life and work of the late Reverend William E. Taylor of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), who collected together many Swahili manuscripts while he was stationed in Mombasa, on the Kenyan Coast, during the late 19th century/early 20th century. Rev. William E. Taylor was considered one of the greatest Swahili scholars, according to the late Sheikh Yahya Ali Omar and Peter Frankl who wrote about Taylor’s
This week’s blog comes from Dawn Wright, SOAS subject Librarian for Africa, and looks at the Furniss Collection (E Coll 7), a collection of Hausa Popular Fiction made by Professor Graham Furniss (former Pro-Director for Research and Enterprise at SOAS, University of London) and acquired by SOAS Library in 2008. The collection was amongst a larger selection of Hausa materials from the Library’s collections on display for a recent visit
Our guest blogger this week is Angelica Baschiera of the Centre of African Studies who recently led a workshop on Swahili manuscripts held in the SOAS Archives. As part of this year’s SOAS Summer School ‘Understanding Africa’ organised by the Centre of African studies and convened by Dr Seraphin Kamdem, a workshop was dedicated to the SOAS Swahili manuscripts collection on 21 July 2015. Ms Angelica Baschiera, Manager of the
In celebration of Women’s History Month and UNESCO World Poetry Day, we are taking a look at the life of Alice Werner, writer, poet and teacher of the Bantu language. Born in Trieste on 26 June 1859 and educated in Germany and England, Alice traveled extensively, living in New Zealand, Mexico, America and throughout Europe She is notable for her many achievements. Not only was she was one of the first women to graduate from Newnham College,
