The lure of postwar London:networks of people, print and organisations

Partly due to their British colonial education, many writers were lured to the postwar metropolis to find publishers and a wider audience for their work. This chapter discusses the contradictory stances of the publishing industry in the 1950s and 1960s. It traces the interactions between editors, audiences, and other cultural networks that made London an international publishing capital for ʼnew’ Commonwealth authors (as they were then known). It was in London that Amos Tutuola or Wilson Harris were first noticed by Faber and Faber, and Sam Selvon’s A Brighter Sun (1952) or George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin (1953) first appeared. This interest soon waned, however, as issues of race, nation, and identity began to dominate, and sharp divisions were apparent, partially due to the myopia of some publishers and the parochial reception of some critics. The chapter also points forwards to the social and political contexts which provoked the vital growth of smaller and more radical publishing houses such as New Beacon (1966) in the 1970s and 1980s.</p

Gothic Revival Architecture Before Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill

The Gothic Revival is generally considered to have begun in eighteenth-century Britain with the construction of Horace Walpole’s villa, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, in the late 1740s. As this chapter demonstrates, however, Strawberry Hill is in no way the first building, domestic or otherwise, to have recreated, even superficially, some aspect of the form and ornamental style of medieval architecture. Earlier architects who, albeit often combining it with Classicism, worked in the Gothic style include Sir Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, William Kent and Batty Langley, aspects of whose works are explored here. While not an exhaustive survey of pre-1750 Gothic Revival design, the examples considered in this chapter reveal how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Gothic emerged and evolved over the course of different architects’ careers, and how, by the time that Walpole came to create his own Gothic ‘castle’, there was already in existence in Britain a sustained Gothic Revivalist tradition

Forging connections: anthologies, arts collectives, and the politics of inclusion

The changing social and political landscape of twentieth-century Britain catalysed a remarkable rise in collaborative activity by artists and activists of black and Asian heritage. Creative communities began to gather in both local and regional contexts, with the aim of sharing resources and securing an audience. This chapter records some of these many activities, tracing the groups’ genesis, manifest objectives, and key contributions. It argues that anthologising should be understood as a specifically motivated activity. Literary anthologies of poetry and fiction served to showcase the diversity of contemporary writing, while also suggesting its coherence. Drawing on the concept of “strategic essentialism” elucidated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, I show that the anthology acts to ensure the visibility of a group, bannered as a unified and singly-titled selection of texts, while also insisting on the differences within: the heterogeneous multiplicity of black and Asian British experiences and creative practices

'Vernacular Voices: Black British Poetry'

ABSTRACT Black British poetry is the province of experimenting with voice and recording rhythms beyond the iambic pentameter. Not only in performance poetry and through the spoken word, but also on the page, black British poetry constitutes and preserves a sound archive of distinct linguistic varieties. In Slave Song (1984) and Coolie Odyssey (1988), David Dabydeen employs a form of Guyanese Creole in order to linguistically render and thus commemorate the experience of slaves and indentured labourers, respectively, with the earlier collection providing annotated translations into Standard English. James Berry, Louise Bennett, and Valerie Bloom adapt Jamaican Patois to celebrate Jamaican folk culture and at times to represent and record experiences and linguistic interactions in the postcolonial metropolis. Grace Nichols and John Agard use modified forms of Guyanese Creole, with Nichols frequently constructing gendered voices whilst Agard often celebrates linguistic playfulness. The borders between linguistic varieties are by no means absolute or static, as the emergence and marked growth of ‘London Jamaican’ (Mark Sebba) indicates. Asian British writer Daljit Nagra takes liberties with English for different reasons. Rather than having recourse to established Creole languages, and blending them with Standard English, his heteroglot poems frequently emulate ‘Punglish’, the English of migrants whose first language is Punjabi. Whilst it is the language prestige of London Jamaican that has been significantly enhanced since the 1990s, a fact not only confirmed by linguistic research but also by its transethnic uses both in the streets and on the page, Nagra’s substantial success and the mainstream attention he receives also indicate the clout of vernacular voices in poetry. They have the potential to connect with oral traditions and cultural memories, to record linguistic varieties, and to endow ‘street cred’ to authors and texts. In this chapter, these double-voiced poetic languages are also read as signs of resistance against residual monologic ideologies of Englishness. © Book proposal (02/2016): The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing p. 27 of 4

Thoughts and sentiments on the evil or slavery [electronic resource] : Or, the nature of servitude as admitted by the law of God, compared to the modern slavery of the Africans in the West-Indies; in an answer to the advocates for slavery and oppression. Addressed to the sons of Africa, by a native.

Signed on p.46: Quobna Ottobouh Cugoano.bLfr report a half-title.Electronic reproduction.English Short Title Catalog,Reproduction of original from British Library

Thoughts and sentiments on the evil and wicked traffic of the slavery and commerce of the human species. [electronic resource] : Humbly submited to the inhabitants of Great-Britain by Ottabah Cugoano, a native of Africa. London, July 1787.

Issued by the author? - A prospectus, containing a note from the author, outlining his life, and contents of the proposed works.Electronic reproduction.English Short Title Catalog,Reproduction of original from British Library

Thoughts and sentiments on the evil and wicked traffic of the slavery: and commerce of the human species, humbly submitted to the inhabitants of Great-Britain, by Ottobah Cugoano, ...

[4],iv,148p. ; 8⁰.With a half-title.Reproduction of original from the British Library.Goldsmiths', 13501Sabin, 17857English Short Title Catalog, ESTCT50177.Electronic data. Farmington Hills, Mich. : Thomson Gale, 2003. Page image (PNG). Digitized image of the microfilm version produced in Woodbridge, CT by Research Publications, 1982-2002 (later known as Primary Source Microfilm, an imprint of the Gale Group)

Pensamentos e sentimentos sobre os males da escravidão

The text presented here was translated from the original English: "Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery", respectfully presented to the people of Britain by Ottobah Cugoano, a native of Africa.The text presented here was translated from the original English: "Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery", respectfully presented to the people of Britain by Ottobah Cugoano, a native of Africa.O texto aqui apresentado foi traduzido do original em inglês: "Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery" (Pensamentos e sentimentos sobre os males do tráfico), respeitosamente apresentado aos habitantes da Grã-Bretanha, por Ottobah Cugoano, um nativo da África