Backgrid:render isn't being called

Question

Backgrid is rendering

<table class="backgrid"></table>

but nothing else. Breakpoints in Backgrid:render() are not reached. I'm a Backbone newbie adapting someone else's code and so am not sure exactly what should be happening but LayoutManager:render() is called..it just never seems to get to Backgrid... The data I want to display are being fetched and look as if they are in the right format...but have to admit that it's difficult to tell once they've been wrapped up in a Backbone collection. Any pointers for how to debug/why Backgrid's render is not being called gratefully received.

Code below:

ListenView.js

define([
    'backbone',
        'underscore',
        'backgrid',
    'app/models/PersonModel',
    'app/collections/PersonCollection',
    'app/views/PersonListView',
    'hbs!app/templates/listen_template'
    ],
    function(
    Backbone,
        _,
        Backgrid,
        Person,
    PersonCollection,
    PersonListView,
    listenTemplate
    ) {

    App = window.App || {};
    var ListenView = Backbone.View.extend({
        template: listenTemplate,
        initialize: function(params) {
            //fetch the list of seen people
            this.model.attributes.seenPeople.fetch( {
                success: function(coll, resp) {
                    //console.log(coll);
                }
            });
        },
        afterRender: function() {
            //initialise person view
        console.log("creating Backgrid");
        this.seenPeopleView = new Backgrid.Grid({
                        columns: [{
                                name: "email",
                                label: "Email",
                                cell: "string"  
                        },{
                                name: "id",
                                label: "ID",
                                cell: "integer"  
                        }, {
                                name: "title",
                                label: "Title",
                                cell: "string" }
                        ],
                        collection: this.model.attributes.seenPeople
                    });
            this.seenPeopleView.render();
                $('#seen-people-list').append(this.seenPeopleView.el);
    }

Answer 1

On the success method from the fetch you should call afterRender.

 var self=this;
 this.model.attributes.seenPeople.fetch( {
     success: function(coll, resp) {
                self.afterRender();
            }
 });

Answer 2

Instead of creating backgrid instance in view (this.seenPeopleView) create instance as

var grid = new Backgrid.Grid({...<your columns and collection related code>..});

Then Render the grid and attach the root to your HTML document as

$('#seen-people-list').append(grid.render().el);

Hope it will work :)