The Black Orpheus: A Journal of African and Afro-American Literature is now available in digital format courtesy of Olongo Africa.
Black Orpheus: A Journal of African and Afro-American Literature was a Nigeria-based literary journal founded by German expatriate editor and scholar Ulli Beier in 1957. It has had several editors since its first edition in 1967 including Janheinz Jahn, Wọlé Ṣóyínká, Christopher Okigbo, Abiola Ìrèlé, among others until its final edition was published in 1994.
Black Orpheus was considered “a powerful catalyst for artistic awakening throughout West Africa” publishing some of the most important writing in English and French in the post-colonial period. While the work was being produced, the journals were difficult to access for those who wanted them even then. As time has passed, it has become even harder to find these documents for researchers and others who need them.
In 2024, Olongo Africa began digitizing newspapers and other cultural materials, to scan all the copies of Black Orpheus journals as part of the Black Orpheus Revisited Project supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations. Many of the journals can now be found in digital format and those that aren’t continue to be donated to the organisation to ensure that it is all available.
For more information on the digitisation project, please click here.
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