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Two years after the publication of Mungo Park’sTravels in the Interior of Africa(1799), the claim by a German cabinet maker/joiner, Christian Friedrich Damberger, to have crossed the African continent on foot over a period of 16 years, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, made for an instant bestseller. After the narrative was unmasked as a hoax, however, critical reception was particularly vitriolic in Britain. This article analyses the reviews in order to determine why the hoax caused such outrage. It emerges that this narrative presents a direct challenge to Banksian notions of travel writing. Furthermore, its portrayal of Africa and its peoples tends to subvert contemporary attitudes concerning inter-racial relationships, the idea of ‘going native’, and, importantly, the slave trade. The article then asks what type of truth the narrative might be generating, if not a strictly factual one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces the Journal of Harriett Low, a substantial section of which was written in the Cape from 12 January 1834 to 4 May 1834. A brief summary of the Journal's main preoccupations is given, and then Low's presentation of Cape fauna and flora and landscape, the Cape Dutch, and slavery, is considered in greater detail. Low's identity as a young American woman who had spent several years in Macao (China) offers a fresh perspective on the Cape in 1834. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kaatje Kekkelbek, or Life among the Hottentots, by Andrew Geddes Bain, continues to be of academic interest for three main reasons: firstly, for its peculiar linguistic composition, secondly, as one of the earliest examples of South African Settler drama, and, thirdly, for its portrayal of the life of so-called 'Hottentots' in the 1830s. Concerning the latter, critical opinion has been divided. This article aims to lay to rest the claims of Michael Chapman and others that Kaatje Kekkelbek is in any way sympathetic to the lot of 'Hottentots', as represented by the eponymous heroine, by attempting to locate the play in the historical context of its production. A further claim is then made that, owing to the form of the drama, Kaatje Kekkelbek is actually a pastiche of a slave narrative, quite possibly The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, which was edited by Thomas Pringle in London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]