Includes bibliographical references and index.

"My own life" : A.K. Boakye Yiadom's autobiography - the writing and subjectivity of a Ghanaian teacher-catechist / Stephan F. Miescher -- "What is our intelligence, our school going and our reading of books without getting money?" : Akinpelu Obisesan and his diary / Ruth Watson -- The letters of Louisa Mvemve / Catherine Burns -- Ekukhanyeni letter-writers : a historical inquiry into epistolary network(s) and political imagination in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa / Vukile Khumalo -- Reasons for writing : African working-class letter-writing in early-twentieth-century South Africa / Keith Breckenridge -- Keeping a diary of visions : Lazarus Phelalasekhaya Maphumulo and the Edendale congregation of AmaNazaretha / Liz Gunner -- Schoolgirl pregnancies, letter-writing, and "modern" persons in late colonial East Africa / Lynn M. Thomas -- Entering the territory of elites : literary activity in colonial Ghana / Stephanie Newell -- The Bantu world and the world of the book : reading, writing, and "enlightenment" / Bhekizizwe Peterson -- Reading debating/debating reading : the case of the Lovedale Literary Society, or why Mandela quotes Shakespeare / Isabel Hofmeyr -- "The present battle is the brain battle" : writing and publishing a Kikuyu newspaper in the pre-Mau Mau period in Kenya / Bodil Folke Frederiksen -- Public but private : a transformational reading of the memoirs and newspaper writings of Mercy Ffoulkes-Crabbe / Audrey Gadzekpo -- Writing, reading, and printing death : obituaries and commemoration in Asante / T.C. McCaskie -- Writing, genre, and a schoolmaster's inventions in the Yoruba provinces / Karin Barber -- Innovation and persistence : literary circles, new opportunities, and continuing debates in Hausa literary production / Graham Furniss.