CLR James
| C. L. R. James | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Cyril Lionel Robert James 4 January 1901 Trinidad |
| Died | 31 May 1989 (aged 88) London, UK |
| Nationality | Trinidadian |
| Other names | J. R. Johnson |
| Occupation | Historian, writer, socialist |
| Notable work |
The Black Jacobins Beyond a Boundary Minty Alley |
Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 31 May 1989), who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist and socialist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple of subaltern studies, and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice in postcolonial literature. A tireless political activist, James's writing on the Communist International stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and his history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, is a seminal text in the literature of the African Diaspora.
Characterised by one literary critic as an "anti-Stalinist dialectician", James was known for his autodidactism, for his occasional playwriting and fiction — his 1936 book Minty Alley was the first novel by a black West Indian to be published in Britain — and as an avid sportsman. He is also famed as a writer on cricket, and his 1963 book, Beyond a Boundary, which he himself described as "neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography", is often named as the best single book on any sport, ever written.
Born in Tunapuna, Trinidad, then a British Crown colony, James was the first child of Elizabeth James and Robert Alexander, a schoolteacher. In 1910 he won a scholarship to Queen's Royal College, the island's oldest non-Catholic secondary school, in Port of Spain, and after graduating he worked there as a teacher; among those he taught was the young Eric Williams, who would become the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Together with Ralph de Boissière, Albert Gomes and Alfred Mendes, James was a member of the anticolonialist "Beacon Group", a circle of writers associated with The Beacon magazine, in which he published a series of short stories.
...
Wikipedia