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The Making of Sabib: A Landmark in South African Bibliography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

D. H. Varley
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Extract

As Ian Colvin observed in his classic Introduction to Sidney Mendelssohn's South African Bibliography, the first recorded voyage round the Cape (by Bartholomew Diaz in 1487) took place at about the time that printing was being ‘invented’ (that is, re-discovered and developed) in Europe. Yet it was not until 1910, more than four centuries later, that the, first comprehensive bibliographical record relating to Southern Africa appeared in print. The almost ‘onlie begetter’ of this seminal work was the elder son of a comparatively impecunious liberal Jewish Rabbi, a mid-19th century immigrant to Britain from Germany, albeit a collateral descendant of the distinguished philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Sidney, brought up in the West country, followed his father to Kimberley soon after the latter had taken up his appointment as Minister to the Jewish Congregation of the small diamond-field town in 1878.

Type
Documentation
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , 1980 , pp. 13 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1980

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Footnotes

*

SABIB: A South African Bibliography to the year 1925, being a Revision and Continuation of Sidney Mendelssohn's South African Bibliography (1910). London. Mansell. 1979. 4v. £175. ISBN 0-7201-0556-0.

This article is based on a talk given in May 1979 to SCOLMA at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

References

1 Introduction to Africana, being a newly-illustrated reprint of the introduction to the South African Bibliography by Sidney Mendelssohn, originally published in 1910, with a biographical introduction by Frank R, Bradlov. Cape Town: Balkena for the Friends of the S.A. Library, 1979. vii, 72p. 10 illus. R9.5O.

2 Sidney Mendelssohn's South African Bibliography, London, Kegan Paul, 1910. 2v.Google Scholar

3 For further information about Mendelssohn, his family and career, see the references listed by Musiker, R., South African bibliography, Crosby Lockwood, 1970, pp.11-14.Google Scholar

4 op. cit. pp.ix-x.

5 South African Libraries, 22/3 (1955) 79-88.Google Scholar