Don Maclennan

Donald Alasdair Calum Maclennan (9 December 1929 - 9 February 2009) 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 did his schooling at St John's College in Johannesburg and completed his formal education 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 was afflicted by motor-neuron disease. He died 9 February 2009, in Port Elizabeth, a month after suffering a stroke.