Africa at the Internet Archive: Native Fairy Tales of South Africa

Today I want to feature another public domain book; this is one that had been missing from Internet Archive for some reason, but I had a copy of the Google-digitized PDF, so I uploaded that to Internet Archive, and it's available there now too: Native Fairy Tales of South Africa by Ethel L. McPherson, published in 1919:

As the author explains in the introduction, these are Zulu stories from Callaway's collection and Sotho stories from Jacottet's collection that she has retold for children. I've written about both of those books previously at this blog: Callaway's Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus and Jacottet's The Treasury of Basuto Lore, both of which are online at the Internet Archive.

There are some great stories in McPherson's book; here is a list of linked titles that will take you directly to any story that grabs your attention: The Magic Lute / Senkenpeng and Bulane / The Daughter of the Sword / The Queen of the Pigeons / The Tall Princess and the Haunted Pool / The Marriage of Untombinde / The Kingdom Above the Earth / The Moon-Child / The Princess and the Frog / The Two Brothers / The Childless Woman / The Daughter of the Ostrich Egg / The Kingdoms of the Dead / When the World was Young / Umnandi and the Goat-Girl / Zim the Cannibal / The Horns of Plenty / The Dumb Prince / The Girl with the Lute / The Lost Beads / The Snake with Five Heads / Tanga the Child of Night.

What makes this book really remarkable is that it has illustrations by Helen Jacobs, a well-known children's book illustrator who was born in 1888 and died in 1970; you can find out more about her life and work here: Helen Jacobs. 

Jacobs illustrated four stories in the book, and they are each quite beautiful:

Now that I've learned how to create my own PDF-anthologies by copying-and-pasting pages from PDFs, I'll be able to create a PDF anthology of African folktales with illustrations. The four illustrated stories from this book will certainly be a part of that, along with the illustrated stories in Andrew Lang's books that I featured yesterday. I am really excited about being able to create these specialized public domain anthologies AND to share them via the Internet Archive. 

Meanwhile, here's McPherson's book, full of stories to read and enjoy:

Native Fairy Tales of South Africa

by Ethel L. McPherson