"She Opened Windows": Edna Manley and Jamaican Literature

Authors

  • Edward Baugh University of the West Indies

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29499

Abstract

Edna Manley has been acclaimed for her contribution to Jamaican culture and social consciousness by way of her work as an artist, mainly in sculpture, and her influence, by example and by guidance, on emerging artists in her time. However, that contribution to the emergence of the “new,” pre-Independence Jamaica, must also include what she did for the development of Jamaican literature, although she was not herself a creative writer. In this regard, she made her contribution by way of her influence on, encouragement of, and practical assistance to emerging writers, such as poets H. D. Carberry, A. L. Hendriks, Kenneth Ingram and M. G. Smith, and novelists Roger Mais and Vic Reid. This essay recognizes the roles of her informal soirées at her home. Those writers who did not attend the soirées, would nonetheless seek her comments on their manuscripts. Then there was her founding and editing of the history-making literary journal-anthology Focus. In addition, a few poems by some of the poets were inspired by particular sculptures of hers.

Author Biography

Edward Baugh, University of the West Indies

Edward Baugh is Professor Emeritus of English, University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica. Born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, he attended Titchfield High School, the University College of the West Indies (BA, 1957), Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada (MA, 1959) and the University of Manchester, England (PhD, 1964). He joined the Faculty of the University of the West Indies at the Barbados campus in 1965, and transferred to Mona in 1968, from where he retired in 2001. He was Visiting Professor of Caribbean Literature at Howard University, Washington, DC, for the academic year 2001-2002. Edward Baugh was the Chairperson for the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies from 1989 to 1992.

Downloads

Published

2019-12-13