My Life and Opinions | Anthologies, Essays, Letters & Miscellaneous

Herman Charles Bosman

This title in the Anniversary Edition series is edited by Stephen Gray.

“Memory is the past held together with pieces of rusty wire. Therewith is the imagination fed and sustained.”

Although Bosman wrote no formal life history, this collection of his writing contains all the autobiographical pieces he wished to become known – from his Cape childhood and his Johannesburg education as a teacher, through to his career as a freelance journalist in exile in London and back home during and after World War Two. 

Included from the available historical records is his passionate self-defence from the dock when, in 1926, he was convicted of murder, with several spirited prison souvenirs freshly recovered. A selection of his private letters is also published here for the first time, together with a broadcast confession. Because his commitment to advancing the cause of literature in South Africa was inseparable from his personality, many of his critical pieces expressing his thinking are here as well. These serve to complete the portrait in his own words of South Africa’s greatest humorist.

With an introduction and several illustrations and photographs.