Building a nation of readers? Women's organizations and the politics of reading in South Africa, 1900-1914

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Periodical article

Title:	Building a nation of readers? Women's organizations and the politics of reading in South Africa, 1900-1914
Author:	Dick, Archie L.
Year:	2004
Periodical:	Historia: amptelike orgaan
Volume:	49
Issue:	2
Pages:	23-44
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	nation literacy women's organizations
Abstract:	Women and women's organizations exploited available opportunities and spaces to assert themselves in South African public life in the early twentieth century. Their educational interventions combined a special concern with nation-building and the kinds of history read by schoolchildren. This article examines the reading initiatives of a number of women's organizations in South Africa from 1900 to 1914, viz. the Guild of Loyal Women of South Africa, the Afrikaanse Christelike Vrouevereniging (Afrikaans Christian Women's Association), the Suid-Afrikaanse Vrouefederasie (South African Women's Federation), the South African Home Reading Union, the Victoria League, and the Victoria League of South Africa. It reveals their political, educational, cultural, economic and personal entanglements, and their attempts to apply reading to nation-building. Their ambiguous legacy influenced the later expansion of reading and literacy schemes and the development of free public library services in South Africa. Notes, ref., sum. in English and Afrikaans. [Journal abstract]