The African Gold Coast writer and statesman J. E. Casely Hayford (1866–1930) was a key figure in liberal anticolonial thought as well as African and British imperial literary and intellectual history.

In this revisionist account, Jeanne-Marie Jackson positions his career as an intriguing case study of anticolonial literature and politics.

Jackson maps the contours of Casely Hayford’s thought through sustained attention to his written work within its Gold Coast and British imperial contexts, demonstrating the far-reaching conceptual resources of his legal background.