Bosman still surprises after 65 years
IT TAKES some doing for an author to keep surprising his readers 65 years after he passed away, but it seems to be all in a day’s work for Herman Charles Bosman and his wily raconteur, Oom Schalk Lourens.
A new edition of Bosman’s classic Mafeking Road collection will be unveiled at the annual festival of the Herman Charles Bosman Literary Society in Groot Marico today, and it’s more than 1 000 words longer than any of the previous editions in the book’s unbroken 69-year stint on South African publishing lists.
Francois Griebenow of Suiderkruis Boeke, publisher of the latest version, said the new edition was prompted by a letter Bosman wrote to Roy Campbell after Mafeking Road’s publication in 1947, expressing regret that he (Bosman) was “in such a hurry” that he did not have time to restore certain stories “to the way they were originally, when (he) wrote them.”
“Bosman was referring to stories such as The Music Maker, Marico Scandal and Yellow Moepels, which first appeared in The SA Opinion in 1935, when he was contribut- ing from London. Eight of the 12 1935 stories were re-used in The SA Opinion between 1944 and 1946, but seven of them were cut for reasons of space, and the shorter versions ended up in Mafeking Road. Since Bosman had no problem including much longer stories in his selection, one can only deduce that the 1935 versions of these stories weren’t readily at hand when Bosman collected them ‘in such a hurry’,” Griebenow said.
The new edition restores, for the first time since Mafeking Road’s publication, the 1935 texts, which adds just under 1 300 words to Bosman’s well-known stories. Two stories in particular, The Music Maker and Yellow Moepels, are more than 400 words longer each, providing lots of novelty for even die-hard Bosman fans.
Fred Mouton, Die Burger’s cartoonist for more than 40 years, has illustrated the 21 Oom Schalk Lourens stories in the latest edition of Bosman’s classic collection.
In September, Mafeking Road was named as one of “seven must-read South African classics” by thesouthafrican.com.
Herman Charles Bosman died in October 1951.