Kawama blood edgar mittelholzer biography

[Word Count: 980] EDGAR AUSTIN MITTELHÖLZER Edgar Austin Mittelhölzer (1909-1965) was a Guyanese writer, widely recognized as the first professional novelist to emerge from the Anglophone Caribbean.

Mittelhölzer was born on December 9, 1909 in New Amsterdam, Berbice in present-day Guyana—then British Guiana—to William Austin Mittelhölzer and Rosamond Leblanc Mittelhölzer. His father, whom he would later describe as a “confirmed Negrophobe” in his memoir A Swarthy Boy (1963), claimed Swiss-German ancestry.

Mittelhölzer was raised among the urban middle class, attending Berbice High School and resolving to become a professional writer in his teenage years.

Kawama blood edgar mittelholzer biography wikipedia

He began submitting short stories to numerous British periodicals in the 1920s, almost completely without success. The Daily Chronicle, a local paper, published his first story in 1928; his second story was published in the Connoisseur a year later.

Unable to find a publisher for his first novel Creole Shi