Edgar Mittelholzer

Edgar Austin Mittelholzer (born December 16, 1909 in New Amsterdam , British Guiana , † May 5, 1965 on his farm near Farnham , Surrey ) was a Guyanese writer.

Life

Mittelholzer was the first of four children of William Austin Mittelholzer and his wife Rosamond Mabel Mittelholzer, nee Leblanc.

In December 1941 Mittelholzer went to Trinidad and Tobago to join the Trinidad Volunteer Reserve on the island of Trinidad . But in August of the following year he was released back into civilian life for medical reasons. He later told about this time as "... one of the blackest and most unpleasant interludes in my life".

He had already married in Trinidad in March 1942. In 1947 Mittelholzer decided to go to Great Britain and in early 1948 he was able to put this project into practice. He came to London with his wife and daughter and soon got a job as a typist with the British Council .

Through a colleague there, he made the acquaintance of the publisher Leonard Sidney Woolf in June 1949 . He was enthusiastic about Mittelholzer's literary work and published the novel “A morning at the office” in his publishing house Hogarth Press in 1950 . This debut was well received by readers as well as literary critics and made Mittelholzer well known.

When Peter Neville published the first volume of Mittelholzer's Magnum Opus - "Children of Kaywana" - in early 1952 , he gave up his position at the British Council and devoted himself only to writing. In May of the same year he was elected for the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing .

Armed with this money, Mittelholzer went to Canada with his wife and four children and settled in Montreal . In this new environment he wanted to continue writing his epic “Children of Kaywana”. Due to the severe winter of 1952/53, Mittelholzer left Canada and settled with his family in Barbados . He lived there for the next three years and it was during this time that his most important novels were written.

In May 1956, Mittelholzer returned to Great Britain with his family and bought a farm near Farnham in Surrey. In May 1959 he divorced his wife. On the occasion of a course in creative writing , he met Jacqueline Pointner and married her in April 1960. At that time, his financial situation was already desolate. When Mittelholzer could not think of any solutions, he committed suicide on his farm near Farnham on May 5, 1965.

reception

Between 1950 and 1965 Mittelholzer was able to publish a novel almost every year. He refused any support from agents or managers and always negotiated his contracts himself. Initially, this action was still under a good star, but it soon became a disadvantage. The difficulties began when the publisher Secker & Warburg (London) rejected his work "The pilling of the croud" because of pornography . His novel "The aloneness of Mrs. Chatham" was also rejected by 14 publishers until it was finally able to go to press in 1965.

Works (selection)

Autobiography

• A swarthy boy . Putnam, London 1963.

stories

• The adding machine. A fable for capitalists and commercialists . Pioneer Press, Kingston, Jamaica 1954.
• Of trees and the sea . Secker & Warburg, London 1956.

Novels

• The aloneness of Mrs. Chatham . London 1965.
• Corentyne Thunder . Heinemann, London 1981, ISBN 0-435-98593-0 (Caribbean Writers Series; 2).
• Eltonsbrody. A novel . Secker & Warburg, London 1960.
• Bones and flute. Roman ("My bones and my flute"). Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt / M. 1989, ISBN 3-596-22752-6 .
• Glowing shadows. Roman ("Shadows move among them"). Claassen, Hamburg 1957.
• Hurricane Janet. Roman ("The weather family"). Schünemann Verlag, Bremen 1959.
• Kaywana. Roman ("Children of Kaywana"). Blanvalet, Munich 1954.
• Latticed echoes. A novel in the leitmotiv manner . Secker & Warburg, London 1960.
• The life and death of Sylvia. A novel . John Day Publ., New York 1954.
• The mad MacMullochs. A novel . Peter Owen Press, London 1963.
• A morning at the office . Heinemann, London 1971, ISBN 0-435-98594-9 (Caribbean Writers Series; 11).
• The pilling of the clouds . Putnam, London 1961.
• A tinkling in the twilight. A novel . Secker & Warburg, London 1959.
• Thunder returning. A novel . Secker & Warburg, London 1961.
• The wounded and the worried . MacDonald, London 1963.
• Uncle Paul . MacDonald, London 1963.

Non-fiction

• With a carib eye . Secker & Warburg, London 1965.

literature

• Patrick Guckian: The balance of color. a re-assessment of the work of Edgar Mittelholzer . In: Jamaica-Journal , Vol. 4 (1970), Issue 1, pp. 38-45.
• Arthur J. Seymour: Edgar Mittelholzer. The man and his work . National History and Arts Council, Georgetown, Guayana 1968 (Edgar Mittelholzer memorial lectures; 1967).
• Frances Williams-Lacroix: Edgar Mittelholzer. Novelist Guayanais (1900-1965); voyage au coeur du monde, voyage du coeur de l'homme . Dissertation, University of Rennes 1996.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Commemorating Edgar Mittelholzer Birth Centenary, part 5 Chronology of the Life and Work of Mittelholzer. Guyana Chronicle, April 19, 2009, accessed March 24, 2014 . 
2. ^ Title of the US edition: The weather in Middenshot