Ethiopia Unbound: A Critical Edition

by J. E. Casely Hayford, Jeanne-Marie Jackson (Editor), Adwoa A. Opoku-Agyemang (Editor)

Overview

This book shines a new light on J. E. Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound, widely considered the first English-language novel published by an African writer. Casely Hayford drew material from his eminent career as a barrister, statesman, and newspaper editor to augment the book’s fictional elements, showcasing the tremendous intellectual versatility of West Africa. Moving between London and the Gold Coast, as well as across the past, present, and imagined future of Casely Hayford’s Fante civilization, Ethiopia Unbound is an essential record of how Africans at the turn of the twentieth century made sense of their place in a rapidly changing world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628955262
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Jeanne-Marie Jackson is Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University, where she works and teaches in the areas of South African, Zimbabwean, Ghanaian, global British, and Russian literary and intellectual traditions. She received her PhD in comparative literature from Yale University in 2012. In 2021 she was named an Andrew Carnegie fellow, and in 2023 she became senior editor of the flagship English literature journal ELH.

Adwoa A. Opoku-Agyemang received her PhD from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature and a master’s from Paris-Sorbonne University. In 2020 she was named the University of Michigan’s Du Bois-Mandela-Rodney fellow, and she is currently a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council fellow. Her main area of research is humor in African literatures.

Table of Contents

Contents Foreword, by Gus Casely-Hayford Introduction A Glossary I. An Ethiopian Conservative II. Sowing the Wind III. Love and Life IV. Love and Death V. In the Metropolis of the Gold Coast VI. The World, the Flesh, and the Devil VII. Signs of Empire: Loyal Hearts VIII. A Magisterial Function IX. The Yellow Peril X. The Black Peril XI. On “The Great North Western” XII. A Leader of Society XIII. Reaping the Whirlwind XIV. The Black Man’s Burden XV. As in a Glass Darkly XVI. Race Emancipation—General Considerations: Edward Wilmot Blyden XVII. Race Emancipation—Particular Considerations: African Nationality XVIII. Race Emancipation: The Crux of the Matter XIX. A Similitude: The Greek and the Fante XX. And a Little Child Shall Lead Them Suggested Further Reading J. E. Casely Hayford: A Timeline Editors’ Glossary: Additional Fante Terms

Editorial Reviews

Jeanne-Marie Jackson and Adwoa A. Opoku-Agyemang have brought back to life a seminal work by one of the founding figures of modern Ghanaian—indeed African—intellectual and political history: J. E. Casely Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound. Their introduction and explanatory notes to the text are priceless. This is a major accomplishment.”
—Ato Sekyi-Otu, emeritus professor of social and political thought, York University, author of Left Universalism, Africacentric Essays

From the Publisher