The Special Collections Book of the Week this week is:

Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography by Clifton Crais and Pamela Scully.

Displayed on European stages from 1810 to 1815 as the Hottentot Venus, Sara Baartman was one of the most famous women of her day, and also one of the least known.  In reconstructing Baartman’s life, this book traverses the South African frontier and its genocidal violence, cosmopolitan Cape Town, the ending of the slave trade, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, London and Parisian high society and the rise of racial science. The book concludes with the politics involved in returning Baartman’s remains to her home country, and connects Baartman’s story to her descendants in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Africa.

Access: https://univofpretoria.on.worldcat.org/oclc/312402581

This book is available at Special Collections, housed on level 5 of the Merensky 2 Library, and is part of our Africana (ZA) Collection.

The Special Collections unit of the Department of Library Services plays a stewardship role in the acquisition and preservation of the Library's rare and valuable information resources, making them accessible to students, staff and researchers, as well as safeguarding them for future generations.