The Lovedale Press during the Directorship of R.H.W. Shepherd, 1930-1955

Abstract

The Lovedale Press was established in 1823 by the Glasgow Missionary Society in order to promote Christian knowledge in southern Africa and to propagate civilised norms of conduct and moral behaviour. 1 During the late 1920s-the final years of James Henderson's principalship---the four departments of the Lovedale Press, the printing, book-binding, retail and wholesale bookstore and the journal, the South African Outlook, were welded into one organisation. The effect of this was to concentrate resources in the direction of publishing, thus creating a powerful organ which would be more capable of efficient book production. Henderson had sensed that the Lovedale Press could be used to serve the educational and mission fields more effectively if it was efficiently managed. He was, therefore, instrumental in the appointment of the . energetic Lovedale chaplain, R.H.W. Shepherd, as director of publications on 3 February 1932. 2 Shepherd was to exercise enormous influence in the development and spread of African writing in South Africa, and under him the Lovedale Press was to become one of the key purveyors of the ideas which contributed to the growth of an African consciousness. This essay will consider the influence of the Lovedale Press in this area, and examine how this influence affected the wider community in South Africa, particularly the world of the white printers. 3 The impact of Shepherd's appointment was to be felt almost immediately. The aim of the Lovedale Press, he wrote, was as always, to provide the ministry of the printed word to the African people, and it was therefore feIt to be no hardship when trade union regulations laid down that the Press must confine itself to vernacular literature and missionary publications. 4