Collection of the Month: Ruth First Papers

Our featured collection for June is the Ruth First Papers collection: the collected notes and writings of Ruth First, anti-apartheid activist, investigative journalist, and scholar. First worked her entire life to end apartheid in South Africa. She was exiled from South Africa in 1964, with her husband, the prominent South African communist Joe Slovo, and their children. In 1982, while working in Mozambique, Ruth First was killed by a letter bomb sent by the South African secret service. 2012 is the thirtieth anniversary of Ruth First’s murder.

Part of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, the project will also host a major symposium on First's work in London on June 7th: see the project site for further details.

The digitisation of the data is ongoing, but the first fruits of the project are now available. They include published writings on Gaddafi's Libya, unpublished writings and correspondence, plus some particularly fascinating scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings from the late 1940s.