McKay, Claude, 1890-1948

Author, poet. Born in Jamaica.

From the description of Claude McKay letters and manuscripts 1915-1952. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122682552

From the guide to the Claude McKay letters and manuscripts, 1915-1952, (The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.)

Claude McKay (1890-1948), novelist and poet.

From the description of Claude McKay collection, 1853-1990 (bulk 1922-1948). (Yale University). WorldCat record id: 60366601

From the description of Claude McKay collection, 1853-1990 (bulk 1922-1948). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 702135949

Clarence McKay and Carl Zigrosser were friends in the 1930's. McKay's 3 letters invite Zigrosser to parties in Harlem and mention McKay's financial trouble. There is also a newspaper clippin about Earl Lewis Brown from 1965 in the file.

From the description of Correspondence with Carl Zigrosser, 1939-1965. (University of Pennsylvania Library). WorldCat record id: 155902102

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-born writer who spent most of his adult life in the United States, Europe and North Africa. He wrote several collections of poetry, novels, short stories, non-fiction and two autobiographical books. He is best known for an early poem, "If We Must Die" (1919), and his first novel, Home to Harlem (1928). He lived in the United States, primarily in New York, from 1913-1919, and then spent most of the next 15 years in England, Russia, France, Spain and Morocco before returning to New York in 1934. He contributed to many liberal and socialist journals, including Sylvia Pankhurst's Worker's Dreadnaught and Max Eastman's The Liberator, and he is commonly identified among the major writers of the Harlem Renaissance. He converted to Catholicism in 1944 and died in Chicago in 1948. See the standard biographical print resources for additional information.

From the guide to the Claude McKay collection, 1853-1990, 1922-1948, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)

Claude McKay, Jamaica-born poet, novelist, and essayist is acknowledged by literary critics as a leading spokesman of the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s.

From the description of Letters, 1964-1967. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 80734600

Festus Claudius McKay, better known as Claude McKay, was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. His work ranged from vernacular verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to fairly militant poems challenging white authority in America, and from generally straightforward tales of black life in both Jamaica and America to more philosophically ambitious fiction addressing instinctual/intellectual duality, which McKay found central to the black individual's efforts to cope in a racist society.

From the description of Claude McKay letter to Yasuichi Hikida, 1934 April 2. (Pennsylvania State University Libraries). WorldCat record id: 48822707

Claude McKay, born in Jamaica, is known as one of the major artists of the Harlem Renaissance, and authored several published and unpublished poems and novels.

From the description of Claude McKay collection : additions, 1912-1953. (New York Public Library). WorldCat record id: 666964817

For fuller biographical treatments of Arthur Schomburg's life, see:

Arthur A. Schomburg: A Biographical Essay by Victoria Ortiz in The Legacy of Arthur A. Schomburg: A Celebration of the Past, A Vision for the Future

Exhibition catalog. (New York: The New York Public Library, 1986).

Sinnette, Elinor Des Verney. Arthur Alfonso Schomburg: Black Bibliophile & Collector (The New York Public Library & Wayne State University Press, 1989).

From the guide to the Arthur Alfonso Schomburg papers, 1724-1938, 1904-1938, (The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division.)