James Currey

• Parent — Boydell & Brewer • Founder — James Currey • Country — United Kingdom • Headquarters — Melton, Woodbridge, Suffolk • Publications — Books • Url — jamescurrey.com

Named after its founder, the company was established in 1984 when James Currey, originally from South Africa, left his position at Heinemann Educational Books to set up an Africa-focused publisher. At Heinemann, working with Chinua Achebe, Currey had spent more than a decade pioneering Heinemann's African Writers Series (AWS), the set of volumes that was a crucial factor in expanding the reach of African literature after World War II, particularly in English. Currey cut his publishing teeth at the Cape Town outpost of Oxford University Press, as well as by spending time moonlighting for The New African, a liberal publication he followed into exile in London when it was stamped on by the Apartheid authorities in 1964. In 1986, speaking at a Royal African Society symposium on the state of publishing in Africa, Currey described what he called "an academic book famine", down in part to the profit-driven reaction of the head offices of the big publishing houses, such as Heinemann and Longman, to negative economic developments on the continent during previous years. Currey spoke with pride of how small publishers like the James Currey imprint were the ones who picked up the slack as best they were able. To ensure high quality and global reach, while maintaining accessibility for African students, he said: As will be familiar to readers of its East African Studies series, for example, that James Currey has had just such a long-running three-continent effort shared between itself, Heinemann Kenya, and Ohio University Press. This co-publishing approach has continued since 2008, when James Currey became an imprint of Boydell & Brewer.