W. E. G. Louw

Who was W. E. G. Louw?

William Ewart Gladstone Louw, was an Afrikaner poet and is in the main known to the literary world merely as W.E.G. Louw. He was the younger brother of the poet N.P. van Wyk Louw.

William Louw matriculated at the S. A. College School in Cape Town. He studied at the University of Cape Town from 1931 -1935 and was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts with a dissertation on the poetry of J. H. Leopold. He continued his studies in Holland at the University of Amsterdam, where he was admitted to the degree of D.Lit.

Louw returned to Cape Town in November 1938. Here he completed another doctrate with a dissertation on the influence of Gorter on Leopold. In 1944 he married the composer Rosa Nepgen.

In 1945, together with his brother N. P. van Wyk Louw and H. A. Mulder, "W.E.G." founded the independent magazine "Standpunte". W.E.G.'s first academic position was as professor of Afrikaans and Nederlands at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. In 1957 he accepted the post of Arts Editor at Die Burger and remained there until the end of 1966. From 1967 he served as professor of Dutch Literature at the University of Stellenbosch, until his retirement in 1978.¹