George Lamming
Barbadian novelist, essayist and poet (1927–2022)
George William Lamming OCC (8 June 1927 – 4 June 2022) was a Barbadian novelist, essayist, and poet. He first won critical acclaim for In the Castle of My Skin, his 1953 debut novel. He also held academic posts, including as a distinguished visiting professor at Duke University and a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brown University, and lectured extensively worldwide.
Early life and education
George William Lamming was born on June 8, 1927, in Carrington Village, Barbados, of mixed Afro-Barbadian and English parentage. After his mother, Loretta Devonish, married his stepfather, Lamming split his time between his birthplace and his stepfather's home in St David's Village. He attended Roebuck Boys' School and Combermere School on a scholarship. Encouraged by his teacher, Frank Collymore – founder of the pioneering Caribbean literary magazine BIM – Lamming found the world of books and started to write.
Career
Lamming left Barbados to work as a teacher from 1946 to 1950 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, at El Colegio de Venezuela, a boarding school for boys. He then emigrated to England where, for a short time, he worked in a factory. As he later wrote: "Migration was not a word I would have used to describe what I was doing when I moved with other West Indians to England in 1950.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1340511. VIAF identifies the subject as 114086935. The Library of Congress control number is n50039924. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 2022, 1953 and 1946.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Lamming” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.