Cambrian Tales and Other Selected Writings – Jane Williams, Ysgafell (Edited and Introduced by Gwyneth Tyson Roberts)
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Cambrian Tales appeared in serialized form in Ainsworth’s Magazine from March 1849 to March 1850 and has not previously been published as a novel. Like the political pamphlet Artegall, also included in this volume, it constitutes part of Jane Williams’ attempts to defend Wales against the notorious ‘Blue Books’, the 1847 government report which damned the Welsh as ignorant, immoral and barbaric. A comedy of manners, set in and around a Welsh country house, it features characters clearly modelled on Ysgafell’s patron, Lady Llanover, and her social circle. Also included are two representative poems, one from Celtic Fables (1862), a feminist reworking of ancient legend, and the previously unpublished ‘A Petition’ in which a night-cap maker protests against her dire exploitation. Ysgafell’s social conscience, her patriotism and her sardonic humour are evident throughout the volume.
The Hindu Bard – Dorothy Banarjee
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The first ever collection of Dorothy Bonarjee’s verse
Poet Dorothy ‘Dorf’ Bonarjee was born in India in 1894 into an elite Bengali family. As a child, she moved to London and in 1912 she enrolled at the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth. Two years later, she was awarded the Bardic chair at the UCW Eisteddfod, and went on to publish poems in Welsh journals. Bonarjee later took a law degree at the University of London and eloped with a French artist. France remained her home for the rest of her life.
Autobiography – Margiad Evans
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One of the most remarkable women writers of the mid-twentieth century
Evans’s writing ranges from the balanced symmetries of her debut novel Country Dance, to Creed with its ’postmodern’ authorial interventions and anticipation of structuralism, through the meditations on creativity and divinity contained in the Autobiography. Evans wrote ground-breaking depictions of love, sex, illness and death in the lives and work of women inhabiting harsh and restrictive rural environments. Her beloved south Herefordshire/Wales borderland to which she moved on her marriage was inspirational in itself. And, as her health deteriorated, so death, and its unquiet acceptance, became central to her work.
Strike for a Kingdom – Menna Gallie
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An innovative narrative – a mix of ‘poet’s novel’ and ‘whodunnit’
Cilhendre’s annual August carnival is disturbed by the discovery of the corpse of the local colliery manager. Murder in their midst causes the villagers’ loyalties to be stretched to their limits. Torn between the miners’ cause and a desire for justice, the people turn to local JP and miner’s butty DJ Williams. DJ finds himself in conflict with Inspector Evans, a policeman who has turned his back on his Welsh roots. Adding to the tumult the body of a stillborn child is discovered nearby. Why should one death pass almost unnoticed and the other prompt disruption to a whole community? The answer to this mystery is rooted in the history and culture of the South Wales valleys in the early 20th century.
Strike for a Kingdom is the first of Menna Gallie’s six novels and was shortlisted on original publication for the CWA crime novel of the year.
First brought back into print by Honno in 2003 Temporarily out of print and now BACK IN PRINT UNDER THE NEW WELSH WOMEN’S CLASSICS BRANDING