Subseries BXB/1/1/BEJ - James Berry

Identity area

Reference code

BXB/1/1/BEJ

Title

James Berry

Date(s)

  • 1995 - 2011 (Creation)

Level of description

Subseries

Extent and medium

1 box

Context area

Name of creator

(1924-1994)

Biographical history

James Berry was born in 1924 and brought up in a tiny seaside village in Jamaica. He learnt to read before he was four years old, mostly from the Bible, which he often read aloud to his mother’s friends. When he was 17, he went to work in America, but hated the way black people were treated there, and returned to Jamaica after four years. In 1948, he made his way to Britain, and took a job working for British Telecom.

One of the first black writers in Britain to achieve wider recognition, Berry rose to prominence in 1981 when he won the National Poetry Competition. His numerous books include two seminal anthologies of Caribbean poetry, Bluefoot Traveller (1976) and News for Babylon (Chatto, 1984). His latest book, A Story I Am In: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), draws on five collections of poetry, including Fractured Circles (1979) and Lucy’s Letters and Loving (1982) from New Beacon Books, Chain of Days (Oxford University Press, 1985), and Hot Earth Cold Earth (1995) and Windrush Songs (2007) from Bloodaxe. Windrush Songs was published to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

He has published several books of poetry and short stories for children (from Hamish Hamilton, Puffin and Walker Books), and won many literary prizes, including the Smarties Prize (1987), the Signal Poetry Award (1989) and a Cholmondeley Award (1991). He was awarded the OBE in 1990. He lives in London.

Archival history

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Content and structure area

Scope and content

Consists of letters and proofs relating to the published poetry works of James Berry.

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Related units of description

BXB/2/7/16

James Berry's archive is held at the British Library, reference Deposit 10691

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