Edgar Mittelholzer

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Edgar Mittelholzer (16 December 1909 - 5 May 1965) was a Guyanese novelist. He was the son of William Austin Mittelholzer and his wife Rosamond Mabel, née Leblanc.

Mittelholzer wrote virtually nothing but fiction and earned his living by it. He is thus the first professional novelist to come out of the English-speaking Caribbean. Some of Mittelholzer's novels include characters and situations from a variety of places within the Caribbean. They range in time from the earliest period of European settlement to the present day and deal with a cross section of ethnic groups and social classes, not to mention subjects of historical, political, psychological, and moral interest.

Corentyne Thunder signalled the birth of the novel in Guyana. Mittelholzer wrote Corentyne Thunder in 1938 at the age of twenty nine. At the time he was living and working odd jobs in New Amsterdam. The manuscript was sent to England and had a perilous existence until finally it found a publisher in 1941.

In December, 1941, Mittelholzer left Guyana for Trinidad as a recruit in the Trinidad Royal Volunteer Naval Reserve, and Corentyne Thunder was published by Eyre and Spottiswoode. He served in the TRVNR, "one of the blackest and most unpleasant interludes" in his life, until he was discharged on medical grounds in August, 1942, and decided to make Trinidad his home, having married a Trinidadian, Roma Halfhide, in March, 1942.

In 1947 Mittelholzer decided that he should go to England since he was convinced that only by so doing would he stand a chance of succeeding as a writer. He had been maintaining himself and his family with a variety of odd jobs such as receptionist at the Queen's Park Hotel and clerk at the Planning and Housing Board. He sailed for England with his wife and daughter in 1948, taking the manuscript of A Morning at the Office with him.

In London, Mittelholzer went to work in the Books Department of the British Council as a copytypist. Through a fellow worker he met Leonard Woolf in June, 1949, and the result was the publication in 1950 by the Hogarth Press of A Morning at the Office. Peter Nevill published his third novel, Shadows Move Among Them, in April, 1951, and in 1952 brought out the first volume of Mittelholzer monumental historical epic, Children of Kaywana. After its appearance, and despite hostile reviews, Mittelholzer took the crucial decision to give up his job at the British Council and to live entirely by his writing.

In May, 1952, Mittelholzer was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing. He decided to spend the year in Montreal and to use his time there finishing the second volume of the Kaywana trilogy. The long Canadian winter of 1952-53 made him decide to move to Barbados with his wife and four children, and he spent the next three years in the West Indies. In that time he completed The Life and Death of Sylvia ( 1953), the second volume of the trilogy, Hubertus ( 1954), and his terrifying ghost story, My Bones and My Flute ( 1955). He was also to use this Barbadian setting for four other novels.

In May, 1956, Mittelholzer returned to England. His marriage was deteriorating steadily, and he was granted a divorce in May, 1959, with his wife receiving custody of the two boys and two girls. In August, 1959, he met Jacqueline Pointer at a writers' workshop and married her in April, 1960.

From 1950 to 1965 (with the exception of 1964) Mittelholzer had published at least one novel a year. He had stopped using an agent and handled all his books himself. At first it seemed a wise move, and in 1952 he began an association with Secker and Warburg that was to last over nine years and thirteen books, but in 1961 there was a falling-out over The Piling of the Clouds, which they refused to publish because it was "pornographic." The novel was to be rejected by five publishers before Putnam published it in 1961, to be followed by The Wounded and the Worried ( 1962) and his autobiography in 1963. He had promised them a second volume which never materialized after he broke with them as well.

Mittelholzer's problems were steadily growing, and critical reception of his work was increasingly hostile. He had acquired the reputation of being "a problem author," and after 1961, he tells us, he lived "under an ever-darkening cloud-pall of opprobrium" ( Jacqueline Mittelholzer, "The Idyll and the Warrior," p. 86). He felt persecuted, convinced that the poor reviews of his books were damaging his literary reputation and interfering with the publication of his work. The Aloneness of Mrs Chatham ( 1965), for example, was refused by fourteen publishers.

The difficulties he encountered in having his books published toward the end of his life affected Mittelholzer seriously. He was badly in need of money to support his first wife and children, as well as his second wife and son.

Mittelholzer took his own life near Farnham, Surrey, England, on May 5, 1965.

His works include: