Soul-brother Eugène N. Marais: Some notes towards a re-edit of his works

Abstract

The intention is to survey the current condition of the works of the South African Eugène Marais (1871–1936). This is with a view to alerting the general reader to certain inherited disorganisations which, in the light of professional scholarly and editing standards, need to be recognised and rectified. Marais’s output as a poet and short story writer, as well as the pioneer populariser of nature studies conducted particularly in the Transvaal Highveld after the Second Anglo-Boer War, in both official languages of his day (English and Afrikaans), have ensured him the status of a unique cultural icon. Yet the publishing opportunities open to him in his hand to mouth, haunted career, especially as a journalist, meant his contributions were assembled into book form haphazardly, or remained unrecuperated from often neglected periodicals of the mid-1890s to the mid- 1930s to which he contributed.

Keywords: Afrikaans poetry, biography, drug abuse, editing etiquette, Eugène N. Marais, nature studies.