Women and the Heinemann African Writers Series

Since the creation of the Heinemann African Writers Series (AWS) in 1962, the texts published by the Series have come to shape the canon of African literature. The Series contributed to the education of school children in Anglophone Africa, influencing their perspectives on what it means to be African. Whilst this Series has been celebrated for the texts produced by its well-known authors such as Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1962), very little work has been done concerning the representations of African women in the texts of the AWS. This thesis analyses the positioning of African women within their colonial and postcolonial nations, through the narratives of the AWS. This research will look at the impact of different African women’s movements and nationalist movements on the representation of women through the narratives of the AWS. Eight different AWS texts are analysed in this thesis, ranging from novels, short stories, epistolary letter, and autobiographical writing, whilst also drawing on archival research in the UK and Kenya. This thesis argues that the African Writers Series, despite the low percentage of female writers published, highlighted issues that African women faced on the continent through the narratives of both male and female writers.