Compiler's preface.

At the beginning of Tim Couzens's greatest in quantity sustained plea for the importance of archival research and oral testimony for southern African literary studies, "Research in Southern African Literature" (1978) he counts an anecdote about finding a three-page alphabetic character by HIE Dhlomo in the Natal Archives in Pietermaritzburg:

I was overjoy With single eye on the publications list of my
curriculum vitae which was at that stage singularly vacuum-packed,
I meditation I could probably squeeze on the outside half an article on
Dhlomo's forty-page piece of poetry [Valley of a Thousand Hills] and 3-page
alphabetic character and another half-article on Plaatje's novel [Mhudi].
Seven