Born: 6 February 1905, Jamaica
Died: 6 May 1965
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
Jamaican activist and writer Una Marson used poetry, stage plays and radio programs to fight racism and sexism in mid-20th century Britain. In her early 20s, Marson was assistant editor of Jamaica Critic, a political journal. The experience shaped both her journalism skills and her political and social views. She soon started her own feminist magazine, The Cosmopolitan, in 1928, becoming the country’s first female editor. Two years later, she published her first collection of poetry, the award-winning Tropic Reveries (1930), followed the next year by Heights and Depths and her first play, At What a Price.
From 1932 to 1945, Marson would travel back and forth between the United Kingdom and Jamaica. On both sides of the Atlantic, she worked to promote Jamaican literature. In the UK, Marson campaigned against racial discrimination that made it more difficult for her to find employment. She wrote pieces for the political weekly Public Opinion, poems like Quashie comes to London and plays like London Calling and Pocomania, about the experiences of women of African descent in Britain.
In 1941, Marson became the first woman of African descent employed by the BBC during World War II. After being made the producer of the Calling the West Indies program, she transformed it into Caribbean Voices, an influential forum for Caribbean literary works that ran until 1958.
Information about Marson’s life after World War II are scant and sometimes contradictory. Delia Jarrett-Macauley’s biography The Life of Una Marson, 1905–1965 was published in 1998.