Anne Walmsley

Anne Walmsley is a British-born editor, scholar, critic and author, notable as a specialist in Caribbean art and literature, whose career spans five decades. She is widely recognised for her work as Longman’s Caribbean publisher, and for Caribbean books that she authored and edited. Her pioneering school anthology, The Sun’s Eye: West Indian Writing for Young Readers (1968), drew on her use of local literary material while teaching in Jamaica. A participant in and chronicler of the Caribbean Artists Movement, Walmsley is also the author of The Caribbean Artists Movement: A Literary and Cultural History, 1966–1971 (1992) and Art in the Caribbean (2010). She lives in London.

She donated her collection of documents on Caribbean art – including exhibition catalogues, photographs, interviews and correspondence with artists, and other papers – to the Alma Jordan Library at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. And her CAM research material was donated to the George Padmore Institute in London, her correspondence with Caribbean writers over many years to the University of Sussex, and her library of Caribbean literature to the University of Newcastle. She then donated material to Newcastle University Robinson Library Special Collections and Archives, as part of the Walmsley (Anne) Archive.

Walmsley was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Jamaica, in 2009. At the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in 2018 Walmsley was named as the recipient of the Henry Swanzy Award in recognition of her distinguished service to Caribbean letters.