Atlantis and Cargate

Atlantis and Cargate John Pritchard The Atlantis Press and the Cargate Press were established by WMMS in the 1920s. Atlantis published for overseas consumption and Cargate for a home readership. The Appendices list all the books published under the Atlantis and Cargate imprints which I have been able to identify. I cannot be sure that either list is exhaustive.1 Atlantis The WMMS General Committee in May 1922 minuted: “It is proposed to supply Christian Literature to West Africa, and to ask Conference to appoint the Revd W T Balmer MA BD2 in this connection, to work under the direction of the Committee, the cost of stipend and rent to be borne for the first year by an anonymous friend. The Committee agreed.”3 William Turnbull Balmer (1866-1928) entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1899). He was a missionary in several places in West Africa, a teacher, a linguist and a writer. Revered as a wise and sympathetic headmaster in Freetown and Cape Coast, he later set up co-operative ministerial training with the Anglican CMS at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone. He learned several African languages and his last assignment was in Cote d’Ivoire where, in his sixties, he embarked on the Adjukru tongue, helping to refine a script and to translate Mark’s Gospel. This was after he had been compelled by ill health to return to England, and subsequently been set apart for literature work; he died shortly after his brief spell in Cote d’Ivoire. The grandly-named ‘West Africa Literature Society’ thus came into being in 1922 and by 1923 English language materials for West African primary schools began to appear under the Atlantis imprint. Balmer himself wrote a series of Readers in English. His Catechism of Christian Experience followed and was widely used. It was translated into several West African tongues and into Shona (Zimbabwe). In 1927 a grant of £25 was made for the production of a Mende hymn-book4, and a grant of £75 from the Waddilove Fund for “the cost of publication of certain books with a limited circulation”5. In 1928 the Committee “Agreed that Conference be asked to sanction the appointment of the Revd A E Southon, for a period of two years, in the first place, as Secretary of the West African Literature Society, Mr Southon to receive the same allowances as were paid to the late Rev W T Balmer”6. Edition after edition of the Primers and Readers in African languages, as well as books in English for African Christians continued to be published, in conjunction with the Book Depots in Lagos and Cape Coast, until the 1960s. A handful of books for Northern and 1 The cover price, which is of marginal interest, is shown where known; that depends on having access to a copy with dust jacket (my own shelves are a dust-jacket-free zone!) or to an advertisement, either in the end-pages of another publication or in eg The Foreign Field. The British Library Integrated Catalogue does not show the cover price. 2 See unpublished biography of Balmer by Hugh Thomas 3 General Committee Minute 4282, 31 May 1922 4 Minute 8522, 30 November 1927 5 Minute 8550, 28 December 1927 6 Minute 9120, 27 June 1928 Southern Rhodesia and Kenya, and even for the West Indies, appeared at one time or another under the Atlantis imprint. These are shown as published by Atlantis Press, London but most have the mention London and Cape Coast. The Book Depot in Cape Coast had been founded in 1882; its long-standing address, PO Box 100, eventually came to be prefaced Atlantis House. The London address changes with time from 7 Carlisle Avenue to Holborn Hall to 25 Marylebone Road. SOAS holds file copies of many Atlantis publications, with an indication of the print-run, and other data.7 The First Primer was reprinted year after year – 16 editions between 1924 and 1946, 222,482 books in all, with a further 10,000 after a long interval in the final edition of 1953. It must have been used in most of the Methodist schools in West Africa, and probably in other schools too; and no doubt each copy was used, in increasingly tatty condition, by several generations of pupils. The number and size of editions decreases for the more advanced Primers and Readers, reflecting the smaller numbers who reached the senior classes. The Minute Book of the West African Literature Society 8 covering the entire period 21 November 1922 to 29 May 1953 deals with the business of the Atlantis Press and of the Book Depots in Cape Coast and elsewhere. In 1948 it had become the Western Literature Committee; the final minute in 1953 refers to the merger of the “Western Literature sub- committee of the Western Committee” with the “Overseas Literature sub-committee” to form the “Overseas Literature Committee” - which sounds like overdue rationalisation! A more complete record than I have provided in the Appendix would incorporate full details of these print runs, and also of the various printing firms who did the jobs. They included the Campfield Press in St Albans and Hazell, Watson and Viney of Aylesbury. The skill of the printers, long before the age of computers, in producing accurate texts in languages of which they had no knowledge and in a variety of phonetic scripts, never ceases to amaze and commands great respect. Some of the Home Organisation Department’s correspondence with printers, with the Book Depots and with other overseas interests are in the archives still held at Marylebone Road9. In the 1945-67 period Fred Pearson at HOD dealt not only with Atlantis publications but with a variety of publications commissioned from the overseas districts. Most were for the Cape Coast Book Depot – some in English, most in Ga, a few in Twi. Songs of the Akan People was printed with music. The longest title was Rules of the Gold Coast Supernumerary African Ministers’ and African Ministers’ Widows’ Fund. There were for a time regular almanacs for French West Africa, Sierra Leone and Western Nigeria. For the Francophone districts there was the Ordre du Culte pur le Dimanche Matin in 1947 and an Adjukru Catechism for Côte d’Ivoire in 1953. There were books in Kimeru for Kenya (including a translation of John Wesley originally written by Mary Senior in Sierra Leone) and a Mukuni hymnbook for Northern Rhodesia10. 7 SOAS ref 12b4 8 Box T133 and Box T136, MMS Archives at SOAS 9 Boxes Ip1-3 10 Ordered by David Temple, Bookroom Manager, Kafue in 1956 Correspondence about an Ibo translation of the Handbook to the Catechism was protracted. It was ordered by AWS Ripley in 1950 and delivered in 1953. In 1956 Ripley wrote to Fred Pearson, “I am writing about this book because it is an extremely slow-selling book which nobody wants. The reason is that it is in the New Orthography. This book was translated by some ministerial students when they were at Uzuakoli and the original manuscript went home to you in the Old orthography. When the books arrived we were amazed to find that they were printed in the new orthography. This book is intended primarily for our church members in the towns and villages and they cannot understand this new orthography. The Ibo Bibles and Ibo Hymn Books are in the old orthography…” and more in the same vein ending with a request for a refund. This met with a prompt reply from Pearson to the effect that “We sent you the proofs in May1951 and got them back in January 1952. We sent a further set in February 1952 which were returned in June 1952. This was quite long enough for you to decide if the type was correct.” Arthur Banks had returned from two decades in Ghana to Birmingham when he corresponded with Pearson about a series of Atlantis booklets, not all of which are listed in the Appendix. The missing titles, which may have been published under the Cape Coast Book Depot imprint, included Christ or Muhammad? and Christianity and Islam – or these may have been alternative titles for the same work; While He Was Yet Young; and When First He Came. Banks wrote some of these booklets himself, Dorothy Turnbull did two and the authorship of others is uncertain – Gordon Jones wrote When First He Came but there is confusion as to whether it was his text that was published under this title. Cargate Records of the Cargate Press are much less complete. Cargate was the publishing arm of WMMS/MMS for half a century from the early 1920s. Its name was derived from the two London addresses of WMMS at 7 Carlisle Avenue and 24 Bishopsgate. Around 250 titles were published including many accounts of mission and church growth overseas, biographies and socio-political studies in the colonial period, some written for an adult and some for a youthful readership, as well as plays, poems, prayers and practical subjects such as a Handbook for Women’s Work and Running a Film Show. I have not as yet traced any record of how these books were commissioned, how the size of the print run was determined, how the Press was subsidised (if at all), where the accounts were kept. Frank Deaville Walker (1878-1945) was the Society’s Editor for thirty years. He edited The Foreign Field and after 1932 The Kingdom Overseas month by month, and wrote 38 annual reports. In his youth he was challenged to dedicate his camera to the Lord’s service and his books and articles were frequently illustrated with the photographs he took on his travels11.

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