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The Journal of Commonwealth Literature in the 1970s

This article looks back across the development of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature in the 1970s and considers its evolution in the context of the wider disciplinary shift from Commonwealth Literature to postcolonial studies. It argues that the editorial generosity and wisdom of editor Arthur Ravenscroft empowered important opportunities of critique for contributors, some of whom anticipated the subsequent concerns of postcolonial thought in contending with the predominant Leavisite paradigms of Commonwealth literary criticism and arguing for a politicized, provincializing new mode of critical activity. In reviewing the journal in the 1970s, we might note that the shift from Commonwealth to postcolonial was more organic and transitional than is sometimes claimed.