Essay
Britons Through Negro Spectacles
Augustus Merriman-Labor · 1909
Synopsis
A Sierra Leonean who has lived in London for five years acts there as guide to an imaginary African friend, Africanus, and takes him around the centre and west of the city. Along the way, he describes the crowds, the language, religion and its sects, food, death, the press and the ideas the British hold about Africa, and turns back on them the gaze that explorers and so-called specialists cast on the colonies.
Context
The volume appeared in London in 1909, from Imperial and Foreign Company, at the author's own expense, the year its author was finally called to the bar, after a lecture tour of ten thousand miles across Africa. The press was divided: The Times found shrewd remarks on English manners in it, the Daily Express vulgar jokes. The commercial failure ruined the author. The book was taken up again by Penguin in 2022, in a series chosen by Bernardine Evaristo.
Who it is for
Two hundred and thirty-eight pages, in English, never translated into French, readable online and reissued since 2022. Better to know that the book parodies explorers' accounts.
Prizes and reception
Divided on publication between praise from The Times and contempt from the Daily Express, it found readers again with its 2022 reissue.
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