Marita: Or the Folly of Love. A Novel by A. Native

On 20th January 1886, the first instalment of what is probably the first West African novel in English was published in a Ghanaian newspaper, *The Western Echo* by a male author using the pseudonym 'A. Native'. This edition, with a 20,000 word introduction by Newell, brings the instalments together for the first time. What is revealed is a powerful tale of the disastrous consequences for African men of abandoning polygyny and marrying according to colonial marriage laws.