The most significant development in this new edition is its accessibility, for the book is now freely available online. [...] In these and other ways, Finnegan's study offers windows into new worlds while reminding readers who are returning to it of all that it encompasses and all that it has bestowed upon African oral literary studies. The book can now be read online, or downloaded as a free e-book or pdf. In its new form, the book is a gift given to us anew and, more importantly, given freely to the continent whence it came.
Felcitiy Wood
"Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa". Journal of Southern African Studies (0305-7070), vol. 40, no. 1, 2014. doi:10.1080/03057070.2014.877663
This volume is complemented by original recordings of stories and songs from the Limba country (Sierra Leone), collected by Finnegan during her fieldwork in the late 1960s.
These recordings are hosted by the World Oral Literature Project
Ruth Finnegan FBA OBE was born in 1933 in the beautiful fraught once-island city of Derry, Northern Ireland, and brought up there, together with several magical years during the war in Donegal. She had her education at the little Ballymore First School in County Donegal, Londonderry High School, Mount (Quaker) School York, then first class honours in Classics (Literae humaniores) and a doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford. This was followed by fieldwork and university teaching in Africa, principally Sierra Leone and Nigeria. She then joined the pioneering Open University as a founding member of the academic staff, where she spent the rest of her career apart from three years – and more fieldwork – at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and is now, proudly, an Open University Emeritus Professor. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.