Scope and arrangement
The collection provides the perspective of an executive of a major foundation who encountered many of the leading cultural and intellectual figures in Africa, Black and white, on the eve of independence in the French-speaking and British Commonwealth territories. The author's published books are represented by correspondence, reviews, and research material. Other writings include two unpublished novels, book reviews, conference papers, encyclopedia articles, and an essay article on the political philosophy of Wole Soyinka. Correspondents include the critic and editor of Black Orpheus, Ulli Beier; the Nigerian author and critic, Abiola Irele; the British Africanist, Dennis Austin; the Ghanaian folklorist, Kwabena Nketia; the British editor of Nigeria Magazine, Michael Crawford; the West African authors Colin Legum, Kenneth Dike, and Efua Sutherland; publishers; and agents. July's extensive research notes for the book Origins of Modern African Thought drew from local West African newspapers from the 1860s to the late 1920s, and from archival sources in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Ghana. Also included are microfilm copies of documents from French colonial archives on the Senegalese Blaise Diagne, and on David Boilat, a mulatto priest and literacy advocate in West Africa in the 1840s.
The Robert W. July collection is arranged in ten series:
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Includes Peter Benson's "Border Operators: Black Orpheus and the Genesis of Modern African Art and Literature".