And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste
Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste,
Hying away to the home of her rest,
Where she and her mate have scooped their nest,
Far hid from the pitiless plunderer's view
In the pathless depths of the parched Karroo.
        (Afar in the Desert, 61-66)

1. Afar in the Desert
2. The Bechuana Boy
3. The Bushman
4. The Caffer
5. The Caffer Commando
6. The Coranna
7. The Hottentot
8. The Kosa
9. The Lion Hunt
10. Makanna's Gathering
11. Song of the Wild Bushman
12. To Sir Walter Scott

Notes on Life and Works

Thomas Pringle was born January 5, 1789, in Blaiklaw, Roxburghshire, and educated at Kelso and afterwards, in 1805, at Edinburgh University. He became clerk, Commissioner of the Public Records of Scotland, and co-editor, Edinburgh Monthly Magazine and Constable's Magazine, in 1817. He married Margaret Brown on July 19 in that year and published his first book of poems, The Autumnal Excursion, in 1819. When he was 30 years old, they led a party including his brother, father, and stepmother, and her sister, to South Africa. They departed on February 18, 1820, and arrived on June 29 at Eildon Kloof, close to present Glen Lynden district. After the settlement had laid down good roots, he went to Cape Town in September 1822 to become Government Librarian. By 1824 he had become co-editor of the South African Commercial Advertiser and had opened a school. Two years later he left South Africa for London, where he did literary work and served as Secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society until his death on December 5, 1834. He is buried in Bunhill Fields, London. In those final years Pringle saw a half dozen of his poems published in George Thompson's Travels and Adventures (1827). One reader was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who wrote Pringle that he believed his poem, "Afar in the Desert," was one of the "two or three most perfect lyric Poems" in English. Pringle brought out a second book of poems, Ephemerides, in 1828, and at last a major book, African Sketches (1834), which brought together his (often revised) poems and a narrative of his residence in South Africa.

• African Poems of Thomas Pringle, ed. Ernest Pereira and Michael Chapman (Durban: University of Natal Press, 1989). PR 5190 P3A57 1989 Robarts Library
• Doyle, John Robert. Thomas Pringle (New York: Twayne, 1972). PR 5190 P3Z6 Robarts Library
• Marchand, Marion. Index to the Poems of Thomas Pringle 1789-1834 (School of Librarianship, University of Witwatersrand, 1960).
• Meiring, Jane. Thomas Pringle: His Life and Times. Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1968. DT 844 .2 P7M3 Robarts Library
• Pringle, Thomas. African Sketches (London: Edward Moxon, 1834). 010097.e.63 British Library
• --. The Autumnal Excursion, or, Sketches in Teviotdale; with Other Poems (Edinburgh: Constable, 1819).
• --. Ephemerides, or, Occasional poems, written in Scotland and South Africa (London: Smith, Elder, 1828). Victoria University Rare Books no. 105
• --. Glen-Lynden: A Tale of Teviotdale (London: Smith, Elder, 1828).
• -- and Robert Story. The Institute: A Heroic Poem in Four Cantos (Edinburgh: W. McWilliam, 1811).
• Thomas Pringle: His Life, Times, and Poems, ed. William Hay (Cape Town: J. C. Juta, 1912). 11611.l.16 British Library

Biographical information

Given name: Thomas
Family name: Pringle
Birth date: 5 January 1789
Death date: 5 December 1834
Nationality: South African
Ethnicity: Scottish
Education
          Edinburgh University: 1805
          Kelso, Scotland
Literary period: Romantic
Occupations
          Editor
          Civil Servant
          Librarian
Residences
          Blaiklaw, Roxburghshire, Scotland: 1789
          Edinburgh, Scotland: 1805 to 1820
          Eildon Kloof, near Glen Lynden, South Africa: 29 June 1820 to 1822
          Cape Town, South Africa: 1822 to 1825
          London, England: 1825 to 1834
Buried at: Bunhill Fields, London