Thomas MacDermot

For those of a similar name, see Thomas McDermott.

Thomas MacDermot (26 June 1870^[1] – 8 October 1933)^[2] was a Jamaican poet, novelist, and editor, editing the Jamaica Times for more than 20 years. He was "probably the first Jamaican writer to assert the claim of the West Indies to a distinctive place within English-speaking culture".^[3] He also published under the pseudonym Tom Redcam (derived from his surname spelled in reverse).^[4] He was Jamaica's first Poet Laureate.

Thomas MacDermot
Born	26 June 1870 Clarendon Parish, Colony of Jamaica, British Empire
Died	8 October 1933
Occupation(s)	poet, novelist, and editor

Early life

Thomas Henry MacDermot was born in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, the third of five children,^[5] and spent much of his childhood in Trelawny.^[2] He was educated at the Falmouth Academy and at the Church of England Grammar School in Kingston, Jamaica.^[4]

Career

He was a teacher before taking up journalism, at The Jamaica Post, The Daily Gleaner and the Jamaica Times, of which he was editor for 20 years.^[4] He worked to promote Jamaican literature through all of his writing, starting a weekly short story contest in the Jamaica Times in 1899. Notable among the young writers he helped and encouraged are Claude McKay^[3] and H. G. de Lisser.^[4]

In 1903, MacDermot started the All Jamaica Library, a series of novellas and short stories written by Jamaicans about Jamaica that were reasonably priced to encourage local readers.^[6] Alongside his work as a journalist, he wrote two novels. The first, Becka’s Buckra Baby, is said to mark the beginning of modern Caribbean writing.^[7] MacDermot's poems were not collected into a single volume until 1951. He was posthumously proclaimed Jamaica's first Poet Laureate for the period 1910–33 by the Jamaican branch of the Poetry League.^[3]

MacDermot retired because of illness in 1922.

Death

He died in an English nursing home in 1933, aged 63.^[3]

Bibliography

• Becka's Buckra Baby (1903), Times Printery, Jamaica.
• One Brown Girl And ¼ (1909), Times Printery, Jamaica.
• Orange Valley and Other Poems (1951), Kingston, Jamaica: Pioneer Press.