Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer

William Charles Scully (1855-1943) is one of South Africa's greatest writers, diarists and poets, although little known outside South Africa. In addition to his work as an author and literary figure, his paid work was principally as a magistrate in Springfontein, South Africa, as well as in Namaqualand and the Transkei. His novel Daniel Vananda (1923) was pioneering in the way that it dealt with the racial issues that have been the source of so much anguish in South African history, with its portrayal of the terrible violence engendered by the anti-African legislation of the time. Similarly, Kafir Stories (1896) contains stories that are generally sympathetic to the perspective of aboriginal African peoples of South Africa. The South African writer Herman Charles Bosman is said to have hailed William Charles Scully as one of the few South African writers at that time that were worthy of reading. His works include: The Wreck of the Grosvenor and Other South African Poems (1886), Poems (