Ghana's first novel, Eighteenpence, by Richard Emmanuel Obeng, was published in 1942. Eighteenpence is not autobiographical like other early West African novels (e.g., Camara Laye), yet the author uses events, characters, attitudes, settings, and so on from his own experience to create within the novel form. Obeng, a product of Eurochristian education, and a practicing Christian as well as an ardent traditionalist, is unable to evaluate the modern way of life in a detached and honest way because he was as much a victim as a perpetrator of this new order. The message of the novel is, therefore, undecided and confused. The plot is simple. To start farming, a poor young man, Akrofi, buys a cutlass on credit. When he cannot pay the money on the agreed date, he offers his services as a farm laborer instead. In the course of clearing his creditor's land, he is falsely accused by the farmer's wife of having made physical threats and sexual advances toward her. This accusation precipitates an avalanche of consequences that catapults the protagonist from the anonymity of an impoverished youngster to the conspicuity of an exceedingly wealthy and successful pillar of society, a symbol of success. Although Obeng set out to write a moral fable that was to demonstrate that hard work and righteous living would bring material wealth, Eighteenpence ended up as something very different. This is the story of Eighteenpence, the first novel written by a Gold Coaster, Richard Emmanuel Obeng. R. E. Obeng was born in 1868 in Akropong to Akua Kuru Animwa of Abetifi, a trader, and Kofi Asare, of Akropong, a sawyer. After the Ashanti War of