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Brought to you from the forthcoming book by renowned historian
Dr. Lennox Honychurch.
Thaly, Daniel (1879-1950) ()
Physician, poet, ornithologist and museum curator. Best known as a poet, he is the most neglected of Dominica's writers, because all of his works remain in French and since he studied and worked in Martinique, and we do not care, that French department has claimed him as their own. As in the rest of the French Antilles his work is studied and written about as a pioneer of Antillian self-awareness in literature. Born in Dominica on 2 December 1879, (his mother was a Bellot) he was educated at the Lycee St. Pierre in Martinique and studied medicine at Toulouse, France until 1905 when he returned to the Antilles. For years he was archivist at the Schoelcher Library in Fort-de-France, before returning to Dominica. Between 1899 and 1932 he published ten volumes of poetry and contributed to Parisian magazines and, later, in English, to the Canada-West Indies Magazine. Many of his poems have loving references to Dominica's beauty, particularly in "L'ile bleue" (the blue island). He was a keen bird watcher, providing an early record of many of the island's birds. He was curator of the Victoria Museum in Roseau and owned Hertford Estate, popularly called Jimmit on the west coast. He lived in Roseau, where the Wesley High School now stands, and where he died on 1 October 1950.
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