Jeanie Conan’s An African ABC

Abstract

A copy of an unpublished manuscript of a children’s alphabet book that was written and illustrated by an Irish artist, Jeanie Conan, in 1901, has been released by the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books. Conan made the book while visiting Nottingham Road in the South African KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. It illustrates life and scenes at her host’s home, and also has three pages referring to the Anglo-Boer War in which she quotes “Uncle Arthur,” who may have been her brother or her relative Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of several alphabet books that referred to the war. Conan’s are the first recorded children’s verses in English written in South Africa. Two other South African children’s writers lived in the Midlands around the same time: Nellie Fincher, author of a notable children’s story set in the Midlands, and Edith King, author of the first published book of South African English children’s poetry.

Keywords: Jeanie Conan, South African children’s verse, alphabet books, Arthur Conan Doyle, Nellie Fincher, Edith King