Abstract
This afterword to the written symposium “Between ‘the lights and shadows’: Reading the new edition of Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man or Perhaps Only —” contains an interview with Sandy Shepherd, publisher at UCT Press, about Dorothy Driver’s 2015 edition of From Man to Man. Topics raised include the importance of local academic publishing in providing locally-specific knowledge, challenging knowledge distribution dominated from the global North, keeping local cultures alive, and establishing synergies between local and international research and local publishing. Difficulties with local academic publishing are addressed, such as high costs and a limited readership. The tensions between producing a thorough academic edition and appealing to a wider audience, and thus facilitating the spread of a novel important to South African cultural history, are discussed.
Keywords
To conclude this written symposium on Dorothy Driver’s and University of Cape Town Press’s (UCT Press) 2015 edition of Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man or Perhaps Only — it is opportune to share an interview with Sandy Shepherd, publisher of UCT Press, about the decision and process of publishing the new edition. 1 Despite the novel’s evident import (as can be gauged by the scholarly discussion in this symposium at large), its reception in terms of sales has been less than exciting. In the interview that follows, Shepherd touches on the “economics” of publishing local authors and academic editions in South Africa, a discussion that may herald larger conversations about the costs involved in book publication and distribution, the consumption habits of the reading public, our responsibility as readers to invest and support such scholarly feats, and the relationship of academic research to general readership. The critical response to the novel has nevertheless been favourable, and Shepherd highlights the value of producing a scholarly edition from a local perspective, of consciously publishing with issues of gender in mind, and of making older literature available in print — particularly when it comes to new material being found or made accessible.
What were your reasons, as a publishing house, for publishing Driver’s new edition? What do you think the value is of a new edition of From Man to Man in the current moment?
Dorothy Driver is a prestigious academic and this, together with her focus on women’s writing — UCT Press has been seeking to redress the gender imbalance among its authors and subject matter — was a good reason to be interested in her work. Dorothy was convinced that this novel, written by the woman widely regarded as South Africa’s first novelist, is far better than the well-known The Story of an African Farm (indeed, Schreiner herself thought so!). With the creation of the website Olive Schreiner Letters Online in 2012, there was a great deal of new material that could shed light on the gestation of the book, including the new ending Schreiner may have intended (the first edition by Samuel Cronwright-Schreiner contained an ending he believed she had wanted). 2 The book had last been published as a single volume in 1982, which was now out of print, so there was room in the market for an edition of this novel. Moreover, Dorothy had brought so much extra material to the book — explanatory footnotes, corrections of errors introduced by Cronwright-Schreiner, some letters to and from Olive which referred to the writing of From Man to Man, and an introduction setting the book in the context of Olive Schreiner’s life. In addition, there was to be a 200th anniversary celebration of the birth of Olive Schreiner’s father, coinciding with the bicentennial celebration of the founding of Cradock, at the Schreiner Karoo Writers Festival, in 2014, which created an excellent marketing opportunity. So as a “product” the book was very attractive to UCT Press. That the book was not ready in time for that particular festival was a small wrinkle in the plans, but it still provided an opportunity to promote its forthcoming arrival to a dedicated readership. From Man to Man was in many ways ahead of its time, with its views on equality in marriage, gender equality, the importance of education, the adoption of a black child and the belief that she should be given equal opportunities to succeed in life, and the idea that men could be as nurturing as women. As a colonial work, it falls within the literature that could be set aside as part of decolonizing the curriculum. Yet its messages are still strongly relevant and Driver could highlight these notions while at the same time analysing them from a postcolonial perspective. Her academic, objective viewpoint makes this edition so much more than a novel.
Do you think South African publishers have a responsibility to promote local authors? What are the benefits or pitfalls of local publishing?
Of course. It is vital to keeping a local culture alive — not that there is only one “South African culture”, but I mean culture in the broadest sense that reflects historical, cultural, social, and environmental references related to a nation. This is of value not only locally but internationally too. Among the benefits of local publishing are affordability, particularly in the area of scholarly publishing. Many large international academic publishers print only expensive hardback editions for the library market. Local scholarly publishers publish mostly softcover editions which are far cheaper (although affordability remains relative). Publishing locally means making South African research and knowledge more readily available to South African readers and counterbalancing the imperialism of knowledge from the global north. The big however, though, is the ratio between production costs and sales in South Africa. The reading public is a tiny proportion of the potential readership, which challenges the economic viability of local publishing.
In your view, what are the major feats of the edition?
For me, the highlight is the inclusion of the different possible ending. Another is Driver’s discussion of the process of working with the text to correct it, which will be illuminating particularly for academics who study the language of historical literature and are familiar with the difficulties of transcribing it. In addition, Driver’s many annotations enhance the richness of the novel, and are invaluable in explaining the work and making it relevant to a local and international readership nearly a century after it was produced — from words that had a different meaning then, to linguistic references, to allusions to historical events, to postcolonial interpretations of elements in the book. The extracts from letters relating to the book add another layer of interest and context.
What struggles did you face in publishing the edition?
It was a huge undertaking which we all underestimated in its complexity; for this reason, the book was published much later than we had hoped for. The book was also far longer than we had anticipated, which meant that Dorothy had to cut down the description of her editing process to a summary and keep the extended version of that chapter for a journal article (Driver, 2015). Further, UCT Press was limited to South African rights only, which made the economics of producing the book extremely restrictive.
What has the reception of the new edition been like?
Academics who have read this edition have praised it highly. It was shortlisted for the National Institute of the Humanities and Social Science (NIHSS) non-fiction award in 2016, and the NIHSS bought a large number of copies to distribute to researchers. But its sheer size has been an obstacle to a more general readership, to whom sales have been small, which is disappointing because I believe this edition will become a treasured classic. 3
The issues raised by Shepherd deserve closer examination, posing questions about the future directions of From Man to Man scholarship as well as the forces governing the local publication of academic editions of fiction.
In discussing the importance of local publishing, Shepherd argues that it challenges global North-dominated knowledge distribution channels by ensuring a local audience’s access to South African research and knowledge production. Synergies between local publishing and local research, as is the case in producing this edition of From Man to Man, allow a dissemination of locally produced research to a local audience. However, as Andrew Joseph points out in relation to scholarly publishing in South Africa, “[t]he schism between local and international creates a false distinction as locally focused and produced content is as necessary to international scholarship as that produced elsewhere” (2015: 62). The complexity of so-called “local” and “international” relations in scholarship can be seen in this written symposium alone. We, as guest editors, are a South African and a Swedish academic working together, and the contributors to this symposium are of various nationalities and backgrounds placed at universities and institutions in South Africa, Australia, the UK, and the US. This symposium is also being published in English in an international journal based in the UK, the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Scholarship generated in different regions thus remains important in providing diverse foci and contexts. Nevertheless, as has been noted by the contributors to this written symposium, a “locally” produced and researched edition of From Man to Man provides essential locally specific knowledge on diverse issues present in the novel such as flora, linguistics, “race”, history, and language. Jade Munslow Ong points out, for example, that “[w]ithout the support of Driver’s notes” the international reader would be likely to miss the role of native plant life as “expressions of indigeneity”, and Driver’s “insight into the role of native plants as sources of food and medicine in colonial South Africa” can spur and aid further research, whether local or international (in Nivesjö and Barends, 2021: 57).
However, for local knowledge, research, and literature to reach a local audience, there are more challenges than merely ensuring that local publishing takes place, as illustrated by the plight of From Man to Man to reach a wider readership. Cost is certainly such an issue. The price of this edition, which retails at roughly 400–470 rand (28–33 US dollars), has likely been an obstacle to widespread readership and distribution in South Africa. 4 To put the price in perspective, an average loaf of bread in South Africa was, in 2018, about R13 ($0.90). 5 Moreover, while the novel’s price might be cheaper than hardcover editions distributed by some international academic publishers, the local South African readership remains very small, perhaps especially for a scholarly edition of a 100-year-old novel. A further issue, as Shepherd duly notes, might be that of design. As Barends points out in a review of the novel, the cover image, although very relevant to the content of the novel, might not fairly represent the novel to a contemporary reader: “the cover belies the novel’s intricate dealings with race, class and native South African life. Indeed, it seems to favour a particularly classical, Western view of the novel, which may repel certain readers” (2016: 371).
A possible tension between appealing to a wider readership and producing a thorough academic edition can also be felt, physically, in the sheer bulk of the book. The novel is long to begin with and, together with the scholarly paratext, it might have reached a proportion that would be off putting to a casual reader. 6 This would not be an issue for a novel which also existed in popular editions, but as the sole freestanding South African edition it might hinder its spread to a wider readership. However, the academic paratext is of great importance and aids in reading the unfinished novel. As pointed out here by Valerie Stevens (in Nivesjö and Barends, 2021), and illustrated by Joyce Berkman (2021) in her analysis of the two endings, the experience of reading the novel benefits from the care Driver has taken in presenting it. This should be weighed against the possible appeal of a slimmer non-scholarly edition for the casual reader. Perhaps the current scholarly edition could serve as a stepping stone for a future popular paperback; such an edition could possibly help introduce From Man to Man into the school curriculum. If we wish to stake a claim for the importance of this novel in South African cultural history, greater accessibility should surely be of importance. At the same time, as Munslow Ong points out, simply including this novel as a prescribed text does not solve any of the current issues of “decolonizing the curriculum”, as “[i]nstead we would need to pursue a new politics of teaching invested in attentive and sensitive diachronic approaches to the study of imperial history and global literatures at all levels of education” (in Nivesjö and Barends, 2021: 55).
A local, academically produced edition serves a vital function in “keeping a local culture alive”, as Shepherd puts it above, in a way that can reflect “historical, cultural, social, and environmental references related to a nation”. Many contributors to this symposium have highlighted how access to a wider variety of literature is of importance to understanding contemporary South Africa through its past. A modern academic edition can also place the text in relation to current thought, such as postcolonial perspectives as Shepherd indicates, or feminist perspectives as Lucy Graham has pointed out (2017). Promoting women’s writing and addressing gender imbalances is indeed one of the reasons mentioned by Shepherd for publishing a new edition of From Man to Man. Significantly, she points to both the issue of redressing gender imbalance among authors and subject matters. That this has been perceived as a noteworthy aspect of the new edition is visible in the edition’s reception (Barends, 2016; Graham, 2017; Maithufi, 2017).
Complicating the notion of the local, Shepherd points out that there is not one South African culture, raising the question of Schreiner’s status as a South African author and From Man to Man as a South African novel. The movements between the local and the international, particularly the imperial, are ever-present in Schreiner’s work and in this particular novel. On the one hand, it is a novel deeply embedded in its South African setting, as detailed by Driver here (2021); on the other hand, it is a novel with strong ties to British novelistic culture as Fick and Munslow Ong suggest (in Nivesjö and Barends, 2021). But as Munslow Ong’s recent (2018) work on African modernism has shown, the direction of travel is not as straightforward as often assumed. What Schreiner as a writer, and From Man to Man as a novel, achieves is precisely to challenge the very idea of boundaries and to show how perceived borders can be transgressed, traversed, and contested while still seeming to remain within or be constrained by them. From Man to Man is at once a local novel and a text caught up in the imperial currents of Schreiner’s time and the international currents of our times. The many voices in this symposium participate in, and contribute to, this spirit of contestation, and the existence of this new edition invites others to do so too, whether a scholarly or casual reader.
