Professor Bernth Lindfors is Professor Emeritus of English and African Literatures at the University of Texas, Austin. He has long been internationally recognised as one of the pioneers and academic authorities on African literary history and criticism and he is the chief archivist of African literary culture. Professor Lindfors is the author and editor of numerous books on African literature, the latest being Early Soyinka (AWP, 2008) Early Achebe (AWP, 2009) and Early West African Writers (AWP, 2010). He is one of the founders of the African Literature Association (ALA), he also began the distinguished journal Research in African Literatures (RAL) in 1970, editing it till 1990. Besides numerous articles on a variety of matters regarding Southern African performance, published in a vast range of journals, including the South African Theatre Journal, he wrote or edited a

large number of relevant books, among which are:

Black African Literature in English, 1982-86 1989

Black African Literature in English, 1987-1991 (Bibliographical Research in African Literatures) 1995

African Textualities: Texts, Pre-Texts, and Contexts of African Literature Africa World Press, 1997

Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business Indiana University Press, 1999

Black African Literature in English, 1992-1996, 2000

Early Black South African Writing in English, Africa World Press, 2011

Ira Aldridge: The Vagabond Years, 1833-1852 and Ira Aldridge: The Last Years, 1855-1867 (Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, 2011 and 2015.

This archive is part of his research for Early Black Entertainments Abroad: From the Hottentot Venus to Africa’s First Olympians (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014) book and were used for some of the illustrations.