Herman Charles Bosman

Herman Charles Bosman (3 February 1905 – 14 October 1951) is widely regarded as South Africa's greatest short-story writer. He studied the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain and developed a style emphasizing the use of satire. His English-language works utilize primarily Afrikaner characters and highlight the many contradictions in Afrikaner society during the first half of the twentieth century. The poet Roy Campbell called him "the only literary genius that South Africa has produced".

Bosman was born at Kuils River, near Cape Town, to an Afrikaner family. He was raised with English as well as Afrikaans. While Bosman was still young, his family moved to Johannesburg where he went to school at Jeppe High School for Boys in Kensington. While there he contributed to the school magazine. When Bosman was sixteen, he started writing short stories for the national Sunday newspaper (the Sunday Times). He attended the Johannesburg College of Education (which in 2002 was incorporated into the University of the Witwatersrand) and submitted various pieces to student literary competitions.

After graduation, Bosman accepted a teaching position in the Groot Marico district in an Afrikaans-language school. The area and the people inspired him and provided the backdrop for his best-known short stories, the Oom Schalk Lourens series (featuring an older character named "Oom Schalk Lourens"), and the Voorkamer sketches.

Over the school holidays in 1926, Bosman visited his family in Johannesburg. During an argument, he shot and killed his stepbrother. Bosman was sentenced to death for the crime and was sent to Death row at the Pretoria Central Prison. But his sentence was later reduced to ten years with hard labour. In 1930 he was released on parole after serving half his sentence. His prison experiences formed the basis for his semi-autobiographical book, Cold Stone Jug.

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