ABSTRACT
Publishers invest in anthologies, and publishers decide the number of pages they want to invest in. The “limitations of size” or “space” ritually lamented in almost all introductions to all anthologies are not a natural given. Rather, they refl ect the anticipated demands of the market place. Howard Sergeant wrote in the introduction to his anthology, African Voices: “in presenting this anthology, however, I do not claim to have included the work of every poet of merit – indeed, for such a representation to have been at all possible, it would have been necessary to double the size of the volume” (xiii). Isidore Okpewho rather bluntly stated in the introduction to his The Heritage of African Poetry: “once again, I regret that I do not have space enough to represent as many poets, communities or pieces as might satisfy all and sundry” (34). Reed and Wake say essentially the same thing in the introduction to their New Book of African Verse, but in a more elegant manner: “in the interests of space we have also excluded the Malagasy poets we gave in 1964 adopting the stricter interpretation of the limits of African literature which is now usual” (1984: xii).
