Description
Emily Hobhouse: Boer War Letters – Rykie van Reenen (Editor)
The famous tend to become slotted into cliché. This has been the fate of Emily Hobhouse, an English-woman by turns reviled and revered for her controversial humanitarian role in the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War. These spirited, on-the-spot letters selected by her-self span not only her well-known work in the camps, but her forceful and imaginative role in the ruined former republics after the war.
They rescue the woman from the myth. And what a woman! She is seen against an unforgettable back-drop of war-time civilian experience. While the letters are eminently readable in themselves — one comes to regret that Miss Hobhouse destroyed the only novel she ever wrote — they ring with persistent historical parallels that will not escape the politically aware contemporary reader.
The letters are liberally annotated and the notes and appendices constitute a treasure trove of quotation, anecdote and sidelight: a browser’s delight. There is a generous photographic section, highlighting various phases of Emily Hobhouse’s life and her South African years. The first edition of Emily Hobhouse Boer War Letters was awarded the Recht Malan Prize for nonfiction.
Also see the First Edition, which was published in hardcover.
