Una Marson - Life After World War II (1945-65)

Life After World War II (1945-65)

Details of Marson's life are limited, and those pertaining to her personal and professional life post-1945 are particularly hard to come by. In 1945, she published a poetry collection entitled Towards the Stars. This marked a shift in the focus of her poetry: while she once wrote about female sadness over lost love, poems from Towards the Stars were much more focused on the independent woman. Also at this time, Marson wrote at least one article entitled "We Want Books - But Do We Encourage Our Writers?" in an effort to spur Caribbean nationalism through literature. Her efforts outside of her writing seem to work in collaboration with these sentiments, though conflicting stories offer little concrete evidence about what she exactly did.

Sources differ in outlining Marson's personal life during this time period. Author Erika J. Waters states that Marson was a secretary for the Pioneer Press, a publishing company in Jamaica for Jamaican authors. This source believes that she then moved in the 1950s to Washington, DC, where she met and married a dentist named Peter Staples. The two allegedly divorced, allowing Marson to travel to England, Israel, then back to Jamaica, where she died in 1965. Another source, written by Lee M. Jenkins, offers a very different tale for Marson's personal life and says that Marson was sent to a mental hospital following a breakdown during the years 1946-49. After being released, Marson founded the Pioneer Press. This source claims that she went in the 1950s to the US, where she had another breakdown and was admitted to St. Elizabeth's Asylum. Following this, Marson returned to Jamaica, where she rallied against Rastafarian discrimination. She then went to Israel for a women's conference, an experience that she discussed in her last BBC radio broadcast for Woman's Hour.

The conflicting details regarding Marson's personal life show that there is very little information available about her. For example, Water's article quotes Marson's criticisms of Porgy and Bess, yet provides no citation for this work. In combination with this is the limited record of her writings during this time period. Many of her works were left unpublished or circulated only in Jamaica. Most of these writings are only available in the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston. Given these constraints, it is difficult to understand the whole of Una Marson's accomplishments during the final period of her life.