Acknowledgements

An earlier version of Lesson 1 appeared under the title 'What is Realism?' in Salmagundi nos. 114-15 (1997).

An earlier version of Lesson 2 appeared as 'The Novel in Africa', Occasional Paper no. 17 of the Townsend Center for the Humanities, University of California at Berkeley, 1999. Cheikh Hamidou Kane is quoted from Phanuel Akubueze Egejuru, Towards African Literary Independence (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1980), by permission of the author. Paul Zumthor is quoted from Introduction à la poésie orale, by permission of Éditions du Seuil.

Lessons 3 and 4 were published, with responses by Peter Singer, Marjorie Garber, Wendy Doniger and Barbara Smuts, as The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press, 1999).

An earlier version of Lesson 5 appeared as 'Die Menschenwissenschaften in Afrika' / 'The Humanities in Africa' (Siemens Stifung, Munich, 2001).

An earlier version of Lesson 6 appeared in Salmagundi nos. 137-38 (2003).

'Letter of Elizabeth, Lady Chandos' was published by Intermezzo Press, Austin, Texas, in 2002.

Some chapters of this book are revised versions of essays previously published in literary and cultural journals.

Editions and translations have been updated for Elizabeth Costelle: Eight Lessons by Eilish Copelin as part of a Semester 2, 2013 scholar's internship. The selection and inclusion of these editions and translations was based on their availability through Australian libraries, namely through the search facilities of Libraries Australia and Trove (National Library of Australia).

Given the international popularity of Coetzee's work, however, this record is not yet comprehensive. Editions and translations not widely available in Australia may not have been indexed. Furthermore, due to the enormous breadth of critical material on Coetzee's work, indexing of secondary sources is also not complete.