The Classic, Volume one, number 1 - Volume three, number 4, twelve

Notes

Volume one, number 1 accompanied by three black and white plates.

Published between 1963 - 1971, 12 editions.

'The Classic magazine, from the outset, chose to focus on the best available examples of artistic and cultural (and hence political) work of its time. In doing so, it was entirely different from the journalism and reportage of Drum of the 1950s even though many contributors had associations with that magazine. It is to The Classic that one must go to find the roots of the cultural revolution of the 1970s in South Africa. With a title taken from a laundry in central Johannesburg that fronted as a shebeen, the first number of The Classic in 1963 was a blockbuster. Nat Nakasa undertook "to seek African writing of merit" (Volume 1:1. p. 4). Nakasa edited only three numbers of this magazine for in 1965 he took up a Niemann Fellowship for journalists at Harvard and he left South Africa on an exit permit because he was refused a passport. Barney Simon took over as editor. Nasaka fell to his death from a New York building on 14 July 1965.'

Warren Siebrits (2005) South African Literary Magazines 1956 - 1978, Johannesburg: Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art, exhibition catalogue