Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Phyllis Shand Allfrey was born in 1908 into a family of white colonial officials in the British colony of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean. Like her compatriot and onetime friend, the writer Jean Rhys - Phyllis has a particular significance in the region as a political as well as a literary figure. Her acclaimed novel, The Orchid House paved the way for a successful writing career in Britain but instead she returned to the Caribbean in 1954 and entered politics. Since her death in 1986, Phyllis's literary work has been neglected. However this month sees the publication of It Falls into Place - her previously unpublished short fiction - which highlights her contribution to the development of West Indian literature. Angela Robson has been finding out more about Phyllis Shand Allfrey's life. She spoke first to Lenox Honeychurch, Phyllis's friend and literary executor in Dominica. It Falls Into Place: the stories of Phyllis Shand Allfrey By: Phyllis Shand Allfrey Published by: Papillote Press ISBN: 0953222411. Disclaimer The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Allfrey, who was born in 1908 into a family of white colonial officials, is the author of the acclaimed novel, The Orchid House which was made into a movie for British television by Trinidadian film maker Horace Ove in 1991. She was also a political activist, and was famous for her role in the founding of Dominica’s first political party, the Dominica Labour Party in 1955. Her inspiration to form a political party in Dominica came after she returned home from London where she was a member of the Fabien Party. "When she returned there, there was a transformation," said Allfrey's biographer Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. "There were no political parties in Dominica. She saw the need for people's participation in politics. It was a very period in the history of party formation in the Caribbean and she essentially abandoned her writing career to go from town to town by foot. It was an amazing effort she made to try to put together a party along the Fabien-Socialist lines." Lennox Honeychurch, Allfrey’s friend and literary executor, told the BBC that Allfrey’s involvement in politics was frowned upon by the White elites in Dominica. Political legacy. "It was a peculiar situation; here is this white West Indian, a petit woman coming out among the working class people to launch this first political party in Dominica," he said. "This made her in the eyes of her class a traitor, and she was a traitor not only to the few white people who still existed, she was a traitor to the very powerful mulatto or coloured elite who felt she was actually turning against her class and helping to destroy their interests." Paravisini-Gebert said although Allfrey saw her involvement in Dominican politics as a way of contributing to the development of the nation, it was driven by her ambition to leave a legacy. "Phyllis always had a deep desire for recognition of one sort or another. She was ambitious but she also had a sense of destiny," Paravisini-Gebert said. "She talked about connections, she talked about the whole sense of 'noblesse oblige' and that it was her social role and obligation to work towards the benefit of the people. There was a sense in her perhaps of legacy. There was an ambition to leave a legacy, to leave something behind." Allfrey also served as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs for the West Indian Federation in Trinidad, but when the Federation came to an abrupt end in 1962, Allfrey returned to Dominica. On her return to Dominica, she was expelled from the party she had formed, and her involvement in politics was limited to running and editing a newspaper, The Star. Although Allfrey's novel was quite successful, her work never received the critical acclaim of her compatriot Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea. 'Delicate balance' The Orchid House tells the story of the return of three white sisters to their Caribbean birthplace, through the eyes of Lally, their Black nurse and chronicles the decline of a once-wealthy planter family. Critics have said The Orchid House also illustrates the growth of a truly Caribbean sensibility within that class, as personified by Allfrey's own life. With the publication of It Falls Into Place, a collection of short stories set in Dominica, New York and London, Allfrey is set to be discovered by a new generation of readers. Her biographer Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert called the collection "a kind of mosaic of this life that she led" and shows the "delicate balance" she had to strike during her life. "The short stories are … a mixture of nostalgia for Dominica and what also comes through too is this sort of humour that she had. She enjoyed life even in its most depressing and perplexing moments," she said. "It's a reflection of life in Dominica and also of the balance that she as a white West Indian, like all white West Indians they had to find between the fact of being caught up with love for the islands and being reviled in a way because their white ancestry is associated with the plantations and slavery and yet (they were) passionate about the culture of the people." It Falls into Place by Phyllis Shand Allfrey. Phyllis Byam Shand Allfrey was a Dominican writer, social activist, and a former parliamentarian in the West Indies Federal Parliament. She is best known for her first novel, The Orchid House (1953), based on her own early life, which in 1991 was turned into a Channel 4 television miniseries in the United Kingdom. Early life and education. Phyllis Byam was born on 24 October 1915 in Roseau, Dominica, West Indies. She was the daughter of Francis Byam Berkeley Shand and Elfreda (née Nicholls). Her father's settler family was long established in Roseau. With roots in the West Indies going back to the 17th century, Phyllis later described herself as "a West Indian of over 300 years' standing, despite my pale face." Her earliest ancestor in the West Indies was Lieutenant General William Byam, a Royalist officer who in 1644 defended Bridgwater against a parliamentary force. Imprisoned in the Tower of London, he was permitted to migrate to the West Indies. After the Restoration of King Charles II in 1660, he was granted estates in Antigua. Career. In politics, Allfrey founded the Dominica Labour Party. On the formation of the West Indies Federation, this was affiliated to the West Indies Federal Labour Party, and in 1958 she was elected to the new West Indies legislature, representing Dominica. Within weeks she was serving in the government of Sir Grantley Adams as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs and was the only woman minister of the new Federation. In 1941 Allfrey established a connection with Tribune, the newspaper of the left wing of the British Labour Party where from 1941 to 1944 her reviews, poems and short stories appeared regularly alongside those of regular contributors like Naomi Mitchison, Stevie Smith, Julian Symons, Elizabeth Taylor, Inez Holden and George Orwell who became its literary editor in 1943. Phyllis Shand came second place in an international poetry competition judged by Vita Sackville-West. She edited the Dominica Herald and also published and wrote for another newspaper, The Dominica Star , which was in being between 1965 and 1982. Personal life. Phyllis Shand married Robert Allfrey, an English Oxford engineer, and they had five children, including their adopted sons, Robbie and David, from a Carib reservation. Their daughter Phina, another Oxford University graduate was killed in a motor accident in Botswana. Death and legacy. Allfrey died in Dominica on 4 February 1986, aged 77. A posthumous collection of her short stories, It Falls Into Place , was published in 2004. She left behind an unpublished novel, In the Cabinet . A collection of her poems, Love for an Island: the Collected Poems of Phyllis Shand Allfrey , was published in 2014. Island dreams. R ead Phyllis Shand Allfrey's short story "A Real Person", and you are immediately convinced that you are in the presence of a literary talent. It's a magnificent tale of a white West Indian teenager, two bizarre cats, a black watchman, a goat-girl and her black Buddhist master, the mystery and enchantment of their encounters set in a landscape of crotons, tropical fruit and crick-crick beetles. Its ending is vintage Allfrey, a Lawrentian assertion of the triumph of beauty over death. "Walter might never resolve the doubt, but at least he was certain that he was blissfully alive, that he was capable of practically anything, and that in spite of the mysterious and inexplicable conflict of faiths and races in the world, it was still a world in which miracles happen." So why is Allfrey virtually unknown or ignored in Dominica and in the wider literary world? What went wrong with her life and writing career? The answer has partly to do with Hurricane David, which in 1979 devastated her home and left her destitute. It is also because two years earlier, her beloved daughter Phina had been killed in a car crash. Her friend Lennox Honeychurch wrote: "I can never forget the howl of anguish as I arrived at her house after hearing of the death of Phina." However, the substantial reason for her invisibility is her whiteness. Allfrey was born in 1908 into a white elite family which had dominated Dominica for centuries.