Alvin Gladstone Bennett (1918–2004),[1] also known as A. G. Bennett,[2] was a Jamaican journalist, novelist, and poet. Born in Falmouth, Trelawny Parish, he left his job as a purser in 1954 to become a journalist for The Gleaner.[1] His newspaper columns were often witty and offered "acerbic comments on the affairs of God and humanity".[3] In 1958, he was posted to Britain as the newspaper's British correspondent.[1] He was also a contributor to the South London Press.[4] While in Britain, Bennett engaged in community service; his interactions with the Caribbean immigrant community would inspire his first novel, Because They Know Not,[1] published in 1959.[2] His second satirical novel God the Stonebreaker was published in 1964.[3][5] Some of his short stories were broadcast by the BBC in the 1960s and 1970s.[1] Bennett was also a prolific poet. His poem, "The Black Man", was published in the Jamaican newspaper Public Opinion in June 1942,[6] whereas his undated anthology of poems, titled Out of Darkness, "displays a degree of irreverence similar to that of his novels", but comprises "conservative" poetry that is "traditional in structure".[3] In 1982, he relocated to Canada,[3] where he would spend the remainder of his life.[1]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f Bennett, Ian Bethell (2016). "Bennett, Alvin Gladstone". In Franklin W. Knight; Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (eds.). Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro–Latin American Biography. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199935802.
- ^ a b Mackay, Mercedes (1959). "Because They Know Not by A. G. Bennett". African Affairs. 58 (232). Oxford University Press: 261. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a094663. JSTOR 718148.
- ^ a b c d Case, F. I. (2004). "Bennett, Alvin Gladstone (1918– )". In Eugene Benson; L.W. Conolly (eds.). Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Taylor & Francis. p. 113. ISBN 9781134468485.
- ^ Wills, Clair (2017). Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain. Penguin Books. p. 364. ISBN 9780141974965.
- ^ Altink, Henrice (2019). Public Secrets: Race and Colour in Colonial and Independent Jamaica. Liverpool University Press. p. 62. ISBN 9781789620009.
- ^ Dalleo, Raphael (2010). "The Public Sphere and Jamaican Anticolonial Politics: Public Opinion, Focus, and the Place of the Literary". Small Axe Project. 14 (2): 80.
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