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1 results

  • Chapter 16 - ‘Usefully Unofficial’ Reading

  • from Part III - New Genres
  • Edited by Stephanie Newell, Yale University, Karin Barber, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    African Literature in Transition
    Published online:
    23 October 2025
    Print publication:
    06 November 2025, pp 313-332

  • Summary

    Focusing on the proliferation of independent African-owned presses in eastern Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s, this chapter discusses the popular pamphlets known as Onitsha market literature. The chapter asks how the upsurge in local publishing shaped readers’ ideas about literary languages and contributed to authors’ social prestige as intellectuals. The chapter describes the practicalities of pamphlet production, as well as the ways pamphleteers offered fresh conceptualisations of literary inspiration outside dominant western frameworks for works of the imagination.