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Anne Walmsley (September 1931 – 12 July 2025) was a British-born editor, scholar, critic and author, notable as a specialist in Caribbean art and literature over a period of five decades. She was widely recognised for her work as Longman's Caribbean publisher, and for Caribbean books that she authored and edited. Her anthology for schools, 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 was also the author of The Caribbean Artists Movement: A Literary and Cultural History, 1966–1971 (1992) and Art in the Caribbean (2010). She lived in London. "Anne Walmsley", Iniva.
In the late 1950s, she worked for four years as a secretary at Faber and Faber, before going on to teach for three years at Westwood High School in Jamaica. On returning to London, she was employed for a while with the BBC Schools television service, before joining the publisher Longman in 1967 as their first editor for the Caribbean, focused on providing local educational material, in which role she travelled throughout the region for nine years. Her experience teaching in Jamaica between 1959 and 1963 informed her compilation of the anthology The Sun's Eye, which drew on Caribbean literary material; published in 1968, the anthology went on to secure an ongoing presence on school syllabuses.Elleke Boehmer, Rouven Kunstmann, Priyasha Mukhopadhyay and Asha Rogers (2017), "(G)localisation, Examining and Textbooks in the Anglophone Caribbean", in The Global Histories of Books: Methods and Practices, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 110.Boxill, Anthony, and Edward Baugh, "Anthologies (Caribbean)", in Eugene Benson and L. W. Conolly, Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Second edition), Routledge, 2005, pp. 47–48. Caribbean writers published at Longman's on Walmsley's watch include Roy Heath (whose first novel, A Man Come Home, she took on in 1974),Margaret Busby (20 May 2008), "Roy AK Heath" (obituary), The Guardian. George Lamming, Samuel Selvon and Ismith Khan.Charlotte Williams and Evelyn A. Williams, Denis Williams, a Life in Works: New and Collected Essays, Rodopi, 2010, p. 107.
During this time Walmsley participated in the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), founded in 1966 by Kamau Brathwaite (known then L. Edward Brathwaite), John La Rose and Andrew Salkey. Her account of attending CAM's first conference – alongside Brathwaite, La Rose, Salkey, C. L. R. James, George Lamming, Michael Anthony, Andrew Salkey, Aubrey Williams, Ronald Moody, Marina Maxwell, Lloyd Reckord, Gordon Rohlehr, Elsa Goveia, Kenneth Ramchand, Calvin Hernton, and many other notables – in September 1967 at Eliot College, Kent, was published in BIM magazine the following year.Anne Walmsley, "First C.A.M. Conference", BIM, Vol. 12, No. 46, pp. 80–83 (January–June 1968).
After 10 years as Longman's Caribbean publisher, Walmsley spent two years in Nairobi as Publishing Manager for Longman Kenya,Anne Walmsley, "Longman Caribbean: Kenya", pp. 87–94, in Tim Rix (ed.), Longmans More Latter-day Memories, Personal and Various, printed for private circulation, 2012. and on her return to the UK she took an MA in African Studies at the University of Sussex. She subsequently worked as a freelance editor and consultant, and was also active with ATCAL (the Association for the Teaching of Caribbean and Africa Literature, founded in the late 1970s).
In 1985, she began research into CAM, funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship. "Caribbean Artists Movement", George Padmore Institute. Another landmark anthology, Facing the Sea (1986), co-edited by Walmsley (with Nick Caistor), introduced writing from the Dutch, French and Spanish Caribbean to secondary school students of the Anglophone Caribbean, its regional span prompted by discussion of such writing in CAM. In 1992, she was awarded a PhD from the University of Kent for her thesis on CAM. That same year it was published as a book by New Beacon Books, entitled The Caribbean Artists Movement: A Literary and Cultural History, 1966–1971, and is considered to be a "groundbreaking study".Gail Low, Publishing Commonwealth: The Case of West Indian Writing, 1950–65, Brunel University, p. 84. Retrieved 16 July 2025. Walmsley donated her research material for the book to the George Padmore Institute. "The Caribbean Artists Movement: Papers of Anne Walmsley, gathered for the creation of her book 'The Caribbean Artists Movement 1966-1972: A Literary and Cultural History', published by New Beacon Books 1992. 1965-1995", catalogue.georgepadmoreinstitute.org, George Padmore Institute.
Walmsley additionally taught part of an MA course, "Aspects of Caribbean Art", at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2000. "Anne Walmsley", Diaspora Artists.
Walmsley's articles appeared in many journals and literary magazines over the years, among them BIM, Wasafiri, South, BOMB, ArtsEtc, and elsewhere. "Anne Walmsley", BIM.Pearn, Julie, "Bibliography", Poetry as Performing Art in the English-Speaking Caribbean (PhD thesis), University of Sheffield, October 1985, p. 364.Anne Walmsley, "For Kamau: A Quipu of Key Moments in the 50th Year of Our Friendship", ArtsEtc, 2015. She also contributed essays to exhibition catalogues and produced critical writings on Caribbean visual artists, especially Aubrey Williams. "Draft transcript of an interview with Aubrey Williams by Anne Walmsley", Tate, 28 March 1972.Anne Walmsley, "Stanley Greaves" (interview), Bomb, Issue 86, 1 January 2004. Her 1990 book Guyana Dreaming, which Williams saw in manuscript 10 days before his death, was the first significant publication on the artist's work. She co-edited Art in the Caribbean: an Introduction with Stanley Greaves, in collaboration with Christopher Cozier, launching the volume at the October Gallery in October 2010.Eliane Mackintosh, , ARC Magazine, 6 July 2012.
Walmsley died on 12 July 2025, at the age of 93. She had lived for many years in Wimbledon, London, with her husband Ron Farquhar, who predeceased her in 2021.
Earlier, she had donated her Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM) research material to the George Padmore Institute in London, "Caribbean Artists Movement", Collections, George Padmore Institute Archive Catalogue. her correspondence with Caribbean writers over many years to the University of Sussex, and her library of Caribbean literature to the University of Newcastle.
Later in 2018, Walmsley donated material to Newcastle University Robinson Library Special Collections and Archives, as part of the Walmsley (Anne) Archive.
At the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in 2018, Walmsley was named as the recipient of the annual Henry Swanzy Award in recognition of her distinguished service to Caribbean letters, "Anne Walmsley to receive Bocas Swanzy Award", Repeating Islands, 21 March 2018. previous awardees having been John La Rose and Sarah White of New Beacon Books in 2013, Ken Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr (2014), Margaret Busby (2015), Jeremy Poynting (2016), and Joan Dayal (2017). In the words of the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, reporting the 2018 award: "One of the most avid supporters and facilitators of Caribbean literature for many decades, Anne Walmsley shepherded key writers into print during her time at Longman, and her school anthologies exposed generations of Caribbean children to the literature of their home region." "The biggest literary event in Anglophone Caribbean in T&T", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 24 March 2018.
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