Oral Literature in Africa: The world of beautiful words

Welcome to this 2025 Third Edition of the songs and stories of Africa - some of them, that is, for their voices are legion and they are still singing.

Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes an introduction as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa.

Ruth thanks Callender Press and especially John Hunt (layout artist and cartographer) for sending forth this new edition of the now old but, I see, still green Oral literature in Africa. But I wonder whether perhaps it is no longer needed, not, that is, in the same way. For as the wheels of the great world turn and the words will dwell for ever they do not by now have to be heard under an "Africa" title. For Africa is no longer a marginal or extreme or "exotic", othered, section of the globe, but an accepted and loved part of our many-peopled, sounding, scintillating world a dear part of us all. The voices may sometimes be partly veiled and unrecognised, but they are always there. They are shared and sharing with us all, no longer separate. Long may you live, great songs and stories and sayings of Africa, no longer shining under a foreign, far, colonial sun but now here, a full, accepted, part of the great, everlasting, heritage of all nations.

This volume is complemented by original recordings of stories and songs from the Limba country (Sierra Leone), collected by Finnegan during her fieldwork in the late 1960s.