TIYO SOGA

A page of South African mission work

First edition: 488 pages, frontispiece portrait of Tiyo Soga - a laid down photograph with his facsimile signature, worn at the front hinge on the title page, rebound in green cloth titled gilt on the upper cover and spine - the script is now faded and the spine is starting to fray at the top, a good copy.

Tiyo Soga was born in 1819. He was the most famous pupil of the Lovedale missionaries. On a visit to Scotland in 1857, he became the first black South African to be ordained in an established church. His journal of the return voyage (as yet unpublished) is an important landmark in South African literature. Soga's translation of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in Xhosa helped to make that book the second most important literary influence in nineteenth century South Africa after the Bible (which he, too, played a large part in translating). He was a prominent writer in the Lovedale newspaper, Indaba, begun in 1862. http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/tiyo-soga