Читать книгу A Bosman Companion - Craig Mackenzie - Страница 5

The purpose of this companion is to be a comprehensive guide to Herman Charles Bosman’s life and works, and to people and places associated with him. It grew out of conversations between the authors about the kinds of questions posed to us by the audiences to which we give Bosman-related talks, plays and presentations.

We have attempted to provide a brief description of, and illustrative extract from, every single one of Bosman’s hundreds of stories, sketches, essays and novels. We have also included photographs and illustrations to provide the kind of detail and interest words simply cannot, and the reader’s attention is also drawn to the detailed maps at the end of the book.

There is also a Classified Contents List at the end of the book as a ‘quick index’: the reader can see at a glance which aspects of Bosman’s life are covered, for example, without needing to trawl through the entire alphabetical listing. A chronology has been provided in order to place Bosman’s life and work in an illuminating context.

In the interests of economy and focus, we have restricted our entries to items of interest and pertinence to Bosman and his world.

The Companion has five main kinds of entries:

1. Biographical entries on HCB, e.g. education (school)

2. People (fictional and historical)

Fictional (characters in HCB’s work), e.g. Bekker, Oupa (Sarel)

Historical (people who knew HCB or who have had something to do with his life and work), e.g. Bernstein, Edgar (1912–74)

3. References to stories/texts, e.g. “In the Withaak’s Shade” (MR: 34)

4. Places (known by HCB or in some way connected to him) e.g. Heimweeberg (Afr.)

5. Unusual/distinctive language, e.g. gramadoelas (Afr. slang)

The standard reference is to the 14 volumes of the Anniversary Edition of Herman Charles Bosman (1997-2005), and these references occur at the end of many of the entries. In the interests of economy, the page numbers that follow such references indicate the first page of the item only.

Certain words and phrases occur repeatedly throughout Bosman’s stories, and we do not therefore provide references to all such instances. One or two illustrative examples from the works have to suffice.

Words that appear in small caps (e.g. ‘Zeerust’ under ‘Heimweeberg’) indicate to the reader that an entry under that word also appears in the Companion. If the word appears more than once in a particular entry, only the first instance of it is rendered in small caps.

As is standard practice, items that begin with the articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ are placed alphabetically according to the next word in the title: thus “The Red Coat” can be found under “Red Coat, The”. However, Afrikaans titles or items are all placed alphabetically under ‘die’: “Die Rooibaadjie”.