Hugh "Gus" Ferguson (1 July 1940 – 27 December 2020)[1] was a South African poet, small publisher, cartoonist, and pharmacist.
Although a pharmacist by profession, Ferguson was best known as a prolific independent publisher of South African poetry, primarily through his imprint Snailpress, based in Cape Town.
[2] Through Snailpress, and sometimes in collaboration with other presses, Ferguson published over 100 collections, many by notable South African poets, including Douglas Livingstone, Tatamkhulu Afrika, Ingrid de Kok, Patrick Cullinan, Don Maclennan, Jonty Driver, Isobel Dixon, Finuala Dowling, and Rustum Kozain.
As such, he has been described by Ben Williams, publisher of The Johannesburg Review of Books, as "South Africa's Atlas of poetry".
[3] Ferguson was born in 1940 in Selkirk, Scotland, but in 1949 moved with his parents to South Africa, where he was raised in Harrismith, Durban, and finally Cape Town, where he spent his adult life with his wife and three children.