Phyllis Byam Allfrey

Phyllis Byam Shand Allfrey was born in October 1908 in Roseau and was a descendant of West Indians. One of her forefathers was Lieutenant General William Byam, a Royal officer who in 1644 defended Bridgewater against the parliamentary force in the West Indies. Baptized as Phyllis Byam, she married Robert Allfrey, an English Oxford engineer, and they had five children and adopted two others – Robbie and David.

Allfrey grew up to become a social activist, newspaper editor, politician, and book author in Dominica. One of her most famous novels is The Orchid House published in 1953.

Allfrey established the Dominica Labour Party (DLP) which later became affiliated with the West Indies Federal Labour Party when the West Indies Federation was created. In 1958, she represented Dominica in the newly created Federal Parliament of the West Indies Federation, a politically elected position that saw her fighting for the national interests of Dominica. She was also appointed as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in the government of Sir Grantley Adams in Trinidad – the only woman minister at that time.

The American millionaire banker JP Morgan was a family friend of the Byam’s, and it was through his help that Phyllis first went to New York where he ultimately met and married her husband. The novelist George Orwell published some of Phyllis’ works he was editor of the left-wing Tribune, and Vita Sackville-West awarded her a literary prize for her writings. She travelled around the world but she never had much money because her family had fallen into hard times.

In 1941, Allfrey began to write for Tribune, a British Labour Party newspaper belonging to the political left-wing. She later became the literary editor of the newspaper in 1943 and also established The Dominica Star with her husband and equally became the editor for the Dominica Herald from the early ’70s to around 1982.

Although The Orchid House was Allfrey’s best-known novel, she also wrote In the Cabinet which remained unpublished until her death. Her collection of short stories which was titled It Falls Into Place was published in 2004 after death, and a collection of her poems titled Love for an Island: The Collected Poems of Phyllis Shand Allfrey was published posthumously in 2014. Earlier in her life, she published her first collection of poems titled In Circles in 1940 and Palm and Oak in 1950.

Phyllis Shand Allfrey died in 1986 at the age of 77 in Dominica. The house she lived in was sold and is now used as a hotel.