Herman Charles Bosman grave at the Westpark Cemetery, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979333067/?tag=2022091-20
1947
(A fictionalized treatment of autobiographical material.)
A fictionalized treatment of autobiographical material.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0798105739/?tag=2022091-20
1949
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CBF7H8K/?tag=2022091-20
1957
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085UCS8E/?tag=2022091-20
1963
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SBM3AG/?tag=2022091-20
1971
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0869781677/?tag=2022091-20
1979
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000V51XFU/?tag=2022091-20
1981
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004A58G4I/?tag=2022091-20
1987
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0798140844/?tag=2022091-20
1947
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0798129166/?tag=2022091-20
1977
Herman Charles Bosman was born on February 3, 1905 in Kuil’s River, Cape Town, South Africa. He was a son of a miner who was killed in an accident in the Witwatersrand while Herman was still a child. His mother was Elizabeth Helena Bosman. Herman had a younger brother - Pierre Malan Bosman.
Herman spent most of his youth in the Witwatersrand.
Although he spoke Afrikaans, Bosman was educated in English-language schools, where he excelled in the study of literature and showed particular interest in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry, and the French Symbolist poets Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud.
As to higher education, Herman attended the University of Witwatersrand and graduated from it.
Bosman also attended Normal College, in Johannesburg, South Africa where he received a teaching certificate in 1925.
In 1926, Herman Bosman accepted a teaching position in the Groot Marico district of the northwestern Transvaal in an Afrikaans-language school. Bosman spent only one year there, but his experiences on the veld and the stories the old farmers told him provided material on which he drew for the rest of his life.
While visiting his family in Johannesburg in 1925, Bosman shot and killed his stepbrother during an argument. Originally sentenced to death, Bosman spent a month on death row before his sentence was commuted to four years imprisonment. After his release, Bosman worked as a journalist, critic, and editor for various newspapers and literary magazines.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Bosman’s short fiction appeared in numerous South African journals such as New L.S.D, New Sjambok, and Touleier where he was founder and publisher. In 1934, he founded Arden Godbold Press with W. W. Jacobs.
During the Second World War, he worked as a journalist, advertising salesperson, and newspaper editor, in Polokwane (former name, Pietersburg), South Africa. In 1944, Bosman was a literary editor of South African Opinion.
He did not produce a book-length work until 1947, when he published a novel, Jacaranda in the Night, and Mafeking Road, a collection of short stories which became a bestseller. Cold Stone Jug, a fictionalized recounting of his prison experience, followed two years later.
From 1948 to his death in 1951, Bosman worked as a proof editor at The Sunday Express.
In his multiple works, Herman Charles Bosman depicted rural Afrikaner life in the northwestern Transvaal, for example, the hardships of farming or the Anglo-Boer War, human endurance in the face of adverse conditions.
In “Failing Sight,” Bosman lamented worsening race relations in South Africa, a theme which received extended coverage in Willemsdorp, a novel concerning interracial sexual relationships.
Although many of Bosman’s stories address ethical concerns, his appreciation for understatement enabled him to avoid charges of didacticism.
The author is mostly known for such his books and short stories as the Oom Schalk Lourens series, the Voorkamer sketches, Mafeking Road. Bosman is also known for his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into Afrikaans.
Praised for its wit, irony, and humor, Bosman’s short fiction has been compared to the work of such recognized masters of the form as Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry, and Saki.
(A fictionalized treatment of autobiographical material.)
1949Quotes from others about the person
"The moral of a Bosman story, when there is one, is always suggested in the mildest manner." - C. J. Fox
"Bosman loves to tell a story which is carefully contrived, which will show up the stupidity of prejudice in a humorous and tolerant manner, and which contains an energetic and incisive twist at the conclusion." - Geoffrey Haresnape
"A delightful humour in most of them; bitter tragedy in some; a deep insight into human nature in all." - F. E. Knight about the stories in Mafeking Road
"Stories of Mafeking Road and the posthumous Unto Dust make a homogenous work, and they are Bosman’s masterpiece." - David Wright
Herman was married three times. His first wife was Vera Sawyer which he lived with from 1926 till 1932. In 1932, Herman married Ellaleen Manson and divorced her in 1944. The same year he married for the last time - this time his darling was Helena Stegman.
She was his wife from 1926 till 1932.
She was his wife from 1932 till 1944.
She was his wife from 1944 till his death.
He was a Herman`s co-founder of Arden Godbold Press.
