Black Orpheus. [16 Issues from the First Series] [with] Volume 6, No. 2 [with] Photographs of the Mbari Club

various: 1958-1966; 1993. Total of 17 issues, various paginations; 7 b&w photographs, each 8-1/2 x 6-1/2 inches. Stapled wrappers, two volumes rebound in boards with original wrappers bound in. Light wear, including some chipping, scuffing and toning to scattered wrappers; biopredation and annotations to a few pages of a few issues; damp-spotting to front cover of one issue. Good to Very Good condition overall.

A large collection of 16 issues (of 22) of the first series (1957-1967) of this influential Nigerian literary and arts journal, plus one later issue. Also included are photographs of the Mbari Artists' and Writers' Club, home of the consortium of artists and authors that published the journal.

Black Orpheus was created in 1957 by German scholar Ulli Beier, and would go on to help launch the careers of editors and contributors like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, and John Pepper Clark. It embraced a blend of traditional African themes and modernist literary experimentation, and provided a necessary platform for African artists and intellectuals seeking to assert their own cultural autonomy while grappling with the legacies of colonialism. Combining literature, photography, art, and critical essays, the journal helped to establish a postcolonial African aesthetic whose impact on movements like Afrofuturism and Neo-Africanism is still being felt today.

Included here are [Series 1], Nos. 3-7 and 9-19; Vol. 6, No. 2.

Although single issues may be found in the trade, a collection such as this is uncommon.