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National Library of Jamaica
Claude Mckay [date unknown]
PEOPLE
Claude McKay (1889 - 1948)
Image from the National Library of Jamaica Photograph Collection. Permission to reproduce this image must be obtained from the National Library of Jamaica.
Further Information - Biography
Claude McKay (1889 - 1948)
Portrait of poet, novelist and journalist, Claude McKay. He was born Festus Claudius McKay in Sunny Ville, Clarendon, Jamaica. He was the son of farmers, Thomas Francis McKay and Hannah Anne Elizabeth Edwards. The youngest of eleven children, he was sent to live with his brother, a school teacher, to receive the best education possible.
McKay began writing poetry at the age of ten years. In 1907, he met and was mentored by Mr. Walter Jekyl, an English gentleman living in Jamaica, who encouraged him to write dialect verse. By 1912, when he emigrated to the United States, McKay had published two volumes of poetry – Songs of Jamaica (1912), the first poems to be published in patois, and Constab Ballads (1912), based on his experiences as a police officer in Jamaica.
McKay married his childhood sweetheart, Eulalie Imelda Lewar, in New York in 1914. The marriage lasted 6 months and Eulalie returned to Jamaica with their daughter Hope, – who was later to say “...he was impossible but he was my father.”
Claude McKay never returned to his homeland. The sequel to his autobiography, A Long Way Home (1937) was called My Green Hills of Jamaica and was published posthumously in 1979. As she accepted his posthumous award for the Order of Jamaica in LA, California, 1978, the daughter that he had never seen, Hope Virtue McKay declared “… He wandered far but his heart forever dwelt in the Clarendon Hills”
Sources:
Giles, Freda Scott, Claude McKay’s life (Modern American Poetry) accessed June 2008
www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/mckay/life.htm
Jamaica Gleaner Online, Diary U.S.A, 28 May 1978, p.3.
National Library of Jamaica, Claude McKay (Biographies) accessed June 2008
www.nlj.org.jm/biographies.htm#c_mckay
Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, Claude McKay: poet, novelist and short story writer (Harlem 1900-1940) accessed June 2008
www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem/text/mckay.html
Senior, Olive, Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage. St. Andrew, Jamaica: Twin Guinep Publishers Ltd., 2003
Tortello, Rebecca, Pieces of the Past: a Stroll Down Jamaica's Memory Lane. Kingston: Ian Randle, 2007
Wikipedia, Claude McKay accessed June 2008
Claude Mckay [date unknown]
PEOPLE
Claude McKay (1889 - 1948)
Image from the National Library of Jamaica Photograph Collection. Permission to reproduce this image must be obtained from the National Library of Jamaica.
Further Information - Biography
Claude McKay (1889 - 1948)
Portrait of poet, novelist and journalist, Claude McKay. He was born Festus Claudius McKay in Sunny Ville, Clarendon, Jamaica. He was the son of farmers, Thomas Francis McKay and Hannah Anne Elizabeth Edwards. The youngest of eleven children, he was sent to live with his brother, a school teacher, to receive the best education possible.
McKay began writing poetry at the age of ten years. In 1907, he met and was mentored by Mr. Walter Jekyl, an English gentleman living in Jamaica, who encouraged him to write dialect verse. By 1912, when he emigrated to the United States, McKay had published two volumes of poetry – Songs of Jamaica (1912), the first poems to be published in patois, and Constab Ballads (1912), based on his experiences as a police officer in Jamaica.
McKay married his childhood sweetheart, Eulalie Imelda Lewar, in New York in 1914. The marriage lasted 6 months and Eulalie returned to Jamaica with their daughter Hope, – who was later to say “...he was impossible but he was my father.”
Claude McKay never returned to his homeland. The sequel to his autobiography, A Long Way Home (1937) was called My Green Hills of Jamaica and was published posthumously in 1979. As she accepted his posthumous award for the Order of Jamaica in LA, California, 1978, the daughter that he had never seen, Hope Virtue McKay declared “… He wandered far but his heart forever dwelt in the Clarendon Hills”
Sources:
Giles, Freda Scott, Claude McKay’s life (Modern American Poetry) accessed June 2008
www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/mckay/life.htm
Jamaica Gleaner Online, Diary U.S.A, 28 May 1978, p.3.
National Library of Jamaica, Claude McKay (Biographies) accessed June 2008
www.nlj.org.jm/biographies.htm#c_mckay
Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, Claude McKay: poet, novelist and short story writer (Harlem 1900-1940) accessed June 2008
www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem/text/mckay.html
Senior, Olive, Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage. St. Andrew, Jamaica: Twin Guinep Publishers Ltd., 2003
Tortello, Rebecca, Pieces of the Past: a Stroll Down Jamaica's Memory Lane. Kingston: Ian Randle, 2007
Wikipedia, Claude McKay accessed June 2008