Africa at the Internet Archive: African Proverbs

For today's African proverb books (see all this week's posts on one page), I've selected two short proverb books available at Internet Archive that are fun for browsing, just getting a sense of the range of proverbs and how they work. 

The first is a new-ish book from 2003, published in South Africa: Words to the Wise: A Collection of African Proverbs by Julia Stewart.

The book is organized thematically, and each proverb is identified by affiliation, although there is no bibliography in the back to indicate any of the sources. So, this is a nice book for browsing, but not useful for research purposes.

Stewart is also the author of a much more substantial book (almost 600 pages compared to just 100 pages for the proverbs: Quotable Africa published in 2004. This book is also available at the Internet Archive! It's not related to folklore, but it is certainly a wonderful book to use to expand awareness of African traditions and thinkers: Stewart's Quotable Africa.

Like the proverb book, this one is also organized thematically, but unlike the proverb book it contains an extensive bibliography of sources.

The other proverb book for today, published in 1962, is entitled simply African Proverbs by Charlotte and Wolf Leslau. 

This book is organized by region but, unfortunately, as with Stewart's book, there is no bibliography of sources.

The Leslaus are also the authors of a very enjoyable collection of African folktales published in 1963, but that book also has no indication about sources, which means it makes for fun reading, but often raises questions which are hard to answer since it offers no leads to follow. Here is that book at Internet Archive: African Folk Tales.

Wolf Leslau was a famous African linguist who specialized in the languages of Ehtiopia; you can find out more about him in this obituary: In Memoriam Wolf Leslau. 

I'll be back tomorrow with yet more proverb books to browse and enjoy! :-)

Words to the Wise:
A Collection of African Proverbs

by Julia Stewart.

African Proverbs
by Charlotte and Wolf Leslau