| 1898 (December 18) |
Eric Derwent Walrond born to William and Ruth Walrond in British Guiana (Guyana). |
| 1906 |
Walrond family moves to Barbados. Eric Walrond studies at St. Stephen’s School for Boys. |
| 1910 |
William Walrond moves to Colón, Panama, followed a year later by family. |
| 1911–16 |
Eric Walrond studies in Canal Zone public schools, then with private tutors. |
| 1916–18 |
Employed as reporter for Panama’s Star & Herald. |
| 1918 |
Moves to Brooklyn, New York. |
| 1918–20 |
Works multiple jobs, including associate editor of Garveyite newspaper The Weekly Review. Moves to Harlem. |
| 1920 |
Marries Edith Melita Cadogan, a Jamaican immigrant with whom he has three daughters in three years. Moves back to Brooklyn. |
| 1921 |
Begins contributing to Garvey’s Negro World, promoted the following year to assistant editor then associate editor. |
| 1922–24 |
While at Negro World, attends the College of the City of New York. |
| 1923 |
Separates from Edith, who returns to Jamaica with their three children. Moves back to Harlem, helps establish the Writer’s Guild, a group of young African Americans. |
| 1924 |
First reference to anxiety and depression in correspondence. Disillusionment with Garvey and United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Begins study of creative writing at Columbia University. |
| 1924 |
Helps organize event in downtown Manhattan introducing African American writers to publishing establishment, resulting in special Harlem issue of Survey Magazine. |
| 1925 |
Publishes in Alain Locke’s groundbreaking anthology The New Negro. |
| 1925–27 |
Employed as business manager at Opportunity, journal of the National Urban League. |
| 1926 |
Publishes Tropic Death with Boni & Liveright. Contracts for a second book, The Big Ditch, a “romantic history” of Panama. |
| 1926 (November) |
Edits special Caribbean issue of Opportunity. |
| 1927 |
Receives Harmon Foundation Award for achievement in literature and Zona Gale Scholarship to study creative writing at the University of Wisconsin. Anthologized in The American Caravan. |
| 1928 |
Receives Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct research in the Caribbean. |
| 1928–29 |
Travels in the Caribbean, including Panama, Haiti, Dominican Republic, St. Thomas, and Barbados. |
| 1929 |
Moves to France. Lives one year in Paris, one year in Mediterranean village of Bandol. |
| 1931 |
Horace Liveright voids contact for The Big Ditch. Walrond returns briefly to New York to negotiate. |
| 1931–39 |
Moves to London. Contributes to several periodicals and joins emergent anticolonial movement. Struggles to place creative writing. |
| 1935 |
Employed as publicity manager for “negro musical revue” touring UK. |
| 1935–38 |
Employed by Garvey’s journal The Black Man. Anticolonial movement galvanized by Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia. |
| 1938 |
Arrested for assault on colleague but acquitted. |
| 1939 |
Onset of World War II, evacuates London to Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire. |
| 1940–44 |
Contributes to three U.S. periodicals from England, including war reporting. |
| 1944 |
Chicago Defender reports “wireless operator and gunner” Walrond shot down flying air raid over Germany for the Royal Air Force (unconfirmed). |
| 1944–51 |
Struggles to publish, takes factory position in Avon Rubber Corporation. |
| 1952 |
Admitted voluntarily to Roundway Psychiatric Hospital, Devizes, England, for treatment of depression. Renews copyright for Tropic Death. |
| 1952–57 |
Cofounds and publishes in The Roundway Review, including Caribbean fiction and installments of his Panama history. |
| 1957 |
Erica Marx of Hand and Flower Press employs Walrond as researcher on a “negro poetry programme” in London. Discharge from Roundway Hospital, return to London. |
| 1958 |
Amid tensions over Notting Hill riots, “Black and Unknown Bards” performed in London’s Royal Court Theatre. |
| 1959–65 |
In declining health, lives in London suburb of Hornsey, employed by import-export firm in financial district. |
| 1966 |
Contacted by Liveright Publishing regarding sale of reprint rights to Tropic Death. |
| 1966 (August 8) |
Dies of pulmonary thrombosis in London. Buried in Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke-Newington, London. |
| 1970 |
Kenneth Ramchand (University of the West Indies) publishes “Eric Walrond: The Writer Who Ran Away” in Jamaican journal Savacou. |
| 1972 |
Collier Books (Macmillan, Inc.) republishes Tropic Death. |
| 1983–85 |
Robert Bone (Columbia University) begins biography of Walrond. |
| 1998 |
Publication of “Winds Can Wake Up the Dead”: An Eric Walrond Reader. |
| 2011 |
Publication of In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond. |
| 2012 |
Publication of Eric Walrond: The Critical Heritage. |
| 2013 |
Liveright Publishing Corporation (W. W. Norton) republishes Tropic Death. |