Don Maclennan

Who was Don Maclennan?

Donald Alasdair Calum Maclennan was a South African poet, critic, playwright and English professor.

He published a number of plays, short stories, collections of poems and scholarly works.

Born on 9 December 1929, in London, England, Maclennan came to South Africa as a child in 1938. He was educated at Witwatersrand University and Edinburgh University.

Maclennan's academic career included lecturing at Wits University and the University of Cape Town. He taught in both South Africa and the United States. He began teaching at Rhodes University in 1966, teaching English there for more than 40 years, although he officially retired in 1994. In later years, he continued to teach at the university, giving weekly seminars for another decade.

In his final years, he self-published a number of works of poetry. In his last decade, Maclennan had motor-neuron disease. He suffered a stroke in January 2009, although his mind was not affected by it. He died 9 February 2009, in Port Elizabeth.