Not much is known about Robert Grendon. He was born in Namibia in the nineteenth-century, then a German colonial possession, of a Herero woman and an Irish trader. Although he seems to have spent most of his lifetime in Natal, he could rightly be considered the first major Namibian New African intellectual. He subscribed to the fundamental historical theme of the New African Talented Tenth that through education, modern civilization and Christianity the African people could be ushered to the historical experience of modernity. In this, he held an ideological and historical perspective on progress similar to that of other New Africans such as Solomon T. Plaatje, Allan Kirkland Soga, John Dube and many others. Because of this ideological convergence among New Africans, Dube felt secure and assured in appointing Grendon the principal of his Ohlange Institute. Furthermore, Dube (was editor from its founding on April 10th 1903 to approximately 1915) in his newspaper, Ilanga lase Natal, published volumes and volumes of Grendon' poetry. So much so, in fact, that even H. I. E. Dhlomo did not publish half the volume of poetry Robert Grendon published. For instance, Dube published in the newspaper from October 14, 1904 to May 15, 1905 (each week) Grendon's epic poem Pro Aliis Damnati of approximately 4412 lines and consisting of 20 long stanzas. An epic that reflects the influence of Alfred Tennyson, and Grendon's own classical education. Dube also published many other threnodies by Grendon about departed New African members of New Africanism. Combining this output with his many Letters to the Editor which appeared in Ilanga lase Natal, Robert Grendon, together with Josiah Mapumulo and H. I. E. Dhlomo, was one of the three major literary intellectuals to have shaped the construction of African modernities in the era when the newspaper was principally occupied with the construction of New African modernity, from its founding to 1960, when the Sharpeville Massacre brought the whole great historical period to a close. Besides publishing in Ilanga lase Natal, Robert Grendon also published his poetry in Mark Radebe's newspaper, Ipepa lo Hlango. Given that Grendon was born of mixed of racial parentage, his deep empathetic and political identification with African Negroes, it is though his political and philosophical orientation were guided by the edict that Tiyo Soga, the first modern major African intellectual in South Africa, gave to his children: "For your own sakes never appear ashamed that your father [in the instance Grendon, mother] was a Kafir, and that you inherit some African blood. It is every whit as good and as pure as that which flows in the veins of my fairer brethren. . . . I want you, for your own future comfort, to be very careful on this point. You will ever cherish the memory of your mother [in Grendon's instance, father] as that of an upright, conscientious, thrifty, Christian Scotchwoman [Irishman]. You will ever be thankful for your connection by this tie to the white race. But if you wish to gain credit for yourselves---if you do not wish to feel the taunt of men, which you sometimes may be made to feel---take your place in the world as coloured, not as white men; as Kafirs, not as Englishmen" (From Tiyo Soga's Journal which has subsequently been lost; italics in the original). Given Robert Grendon's intellectually passionate commitment to the ideology of New Africanism, the quintessential philosophy of New African modernity, it is rather unfortunate that he presently been lost in South African intellectual and cultural history.