Alvin Gladstone Bennett

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
  1. 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.
  2. Mackay, Mercedes (1959). "Because They Know Not by A. G. Bennett". African Affairs. Oxford University Press. 58 (232): 261. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a094663. JSTOR 718148.
  3. 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.
  4. Wills, Clair (2017). Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain. Penguin Books. p. 364. ISBN 9780141974965.
  5. Altink, Henrice (2019). Public Secrets: Race and Colour in Colonial and Independent Jamaica. Liverpool University Press. p. 62. ISBN 9781789620009.
  6. 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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