C. L. R. James

Christian Høgsbjerg (University of Brighton)

Ed. by Ronald Cummings, McMaster University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 4.1.1: Anglophone Writing and Culture of Central America and the Caribbean.
Vol. editors: Ronald Cummings (McMaster University), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Melanie Otto (Trinity College Dublin), Jak Peake (University of Essex), Abigail Ward (University of Nottingham)

Domains

Cricket

Dates

Born 4 Jan 1901
Died 19 May 1989
Activity 1921-1989

Places

Born in Trinidad
Active in Trinidad; United Kingdom; United States

Cultural Identities

Caribbean Black British

Activities

Primary

Essayist
Journalist
Novelist

Other

Cultural Theorist/ Critic
Historian / Chronicler

Resources

James' Works

Save to Bookshelf

The black Trinidadian Marxist historian and writer Cyril Lionel Robert James was one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable Caribbean thinkers, perhaps best remembered as the author of the classic history of the Haitian Revolution,

The Black Jacobins

(1938). As well as writing a classic of revolutionary anti-colonialist literature, James – a creative and original anti-Stalinist Marxist theorist and Pan-Africanist activist – also made his mark as a novelist, playwright, sports writer, literary critic, and penetrating commentator on cultural matters.

C. L. R. James was born on 4 January 1901 in Trinidad, a tiny Caribbean island then languishing as a Crown colony in the economic backwaters of the British Empire. His parents, Robert and Ida Elizabeth James, were black and lower

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2764 words

Citation: Høgsbjerg, Christian. "C. L. R. James". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 June 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2334, accessed 25 November 2024.]