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George Lamming Collection

George Lamming was born on June 8, 1927 in Carrington Village, St. Michael. He attended Roebuck’s Boys School, where he won a scholarship to Combermere School. There, encouraged by his teacher, Frank Collymore, Lamming developed a passion for reading and began his career as a poet.
 
From 1946 to 1950, George Lamming worked as an English teacher at El Collegio de Venezuela, a boarding school for boys in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad. There he was exposed to many of that country’s literati such as Cecil Herbert, Clifford Sealey, Eric Roach and others who belonged to a group known as The Reader’s and Writer’s Guild. He migrated to England in 1950 where he worked in a factory for a short time before becoming a broadcaster for the BBC Colonial Service in 1951. His writings, edited by Frank Collymore, were published in the Barbadian magazine, Bim. “Voices of the Caribbean”, a well-known BBC radio programme aired several of Lamming’s poems and short prose pieces.

Lamming turned novelist in 1953, with the publication of In the Castle of My Skin, his first book of fiction, which immediately became a classic. Other major publications that followed include: The Emigrants (1954); Of Age and Innocence (1958); Season of Adventure (1960); The Pleasures of Exile (1960); Water with Berries (1971); and, Natives of My Person (1971). 
 
In 1980, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree by The University of the West Indies. The University further honoured Mr. Lamming when, in 2009, the Pedagogical Centre of the Errol Barrow Centre for the Creative Imagination (EBCCI) on the Cave Hill Campus was named the George Lamming Pedagogical Centre.

The George Lamming Collection (GLC) of over 3,000 printed items and artefacts is located on the ground floor of the Main Library. The collection represents Mr. Lamming’s personal library and includes many of the books he collected over the years. Materials from this collection are available on a reference basis only.  Usage is currently via the WIC. For further information, please contact:

Mr. Carlyle Best – carlyle.best@cavehill.uwi.edu or (246) 417-4456.
Miss Fay Thompson – fay.thompson@cavehill.uwi.edu or (246) 417-4959.
Mrs. Ingrid Iton – margaret.iton@cavehill.uwi.edu (246) 417-4841.