Frank A. Collymore: A man of the threshold
Frank A. Collymore of Barbados, 1893–1980, was perhaps best known as the editor of Bim, the regional literary magazine in the English-speaking Caribbean. He was also a poet, short story writer, eminent amateur actor, school-teacher and artist. Between 1944 and 1971 Collymore published five collections of poetry and an often reprinted study of ‘Barbadian dialect’. In 1991, a collection of his short stories was published posthumously. In his later years he was often described as a ‘literary genius’ and as ‘The Grand Old Man of West Indian literature’. He won honorary awards and wide recognition in the English-speaking region for his role in the development of Caribbean literature. This journal article is available in Kunapipi: https://ro.uow.edu.au/kunapipi/vol26/iss1/17
Warner Arundell: The Adventures of a Creole
Of all the islands in the Caribbean, Trinidad has experienced the most varied ethnocultural and linguistic history. Its relatively brief period of plantation slavery and extent of racial mixing have generated a wide range of literary responses. Previous examinations of Trinidad's literary roots have largely dismissed works written prior to 1920. The first work in the series is Warner Arundell, the Adventures of a Creole, originally published in 1838. This was the first novel set at least partly in Trinidad and possibly the first Caribbean novel in English. This extremely well written novel provides a "good read" as it chronicles the adventures of Warner Arundell, a white Creole of British descent, born in Grenada and brought up in Antigua and Trinidad. After being defrauded by lawyers, he studies law in Venezuela and medicine in England, then goes to seek his fortune. After many adventures, he is reunited with the coloured branch of his family and his Venezuelan love. The originally published novel has been heavily annotated and the contextualized edition of the original text makes it useful to scholars. The book is of particular interest to students and faculty of Caribbean literature, Commonwealth literature, postcolonial literature, world literatures in English, nineteenth-century literature, Caribbean history and African American studies.
The Thirties and the Forties
Our sociological theories, our political philosophy, our practical maxims of business, our political economy, and our doctrines of education. are derived from an unbroken tradition of great thinkers and of practical examples, from the age of Plato in the fifth century before Christ to the end of the last century. The whole of this tradition is warped by the vicious assumption that each generation will substantially live amid the conditions governing the lives of its fathers and will transmit those conditions to mould with equal force the lives of its children. We are living in the first period of human history for which this assumption is false.'