Days: 'The day that Alexander Sorel came the rain stopped''

By Dorothy Edwards

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.

Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party. At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past.

Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.

Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother’s pension with whom she now lived.

Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day. She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata’, a short novel published in 1928.

Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.

However, Dorothy’s life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.

On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station.

Her suicide note read: "I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Miniature Masterpieces
• Release date: Jan 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781803547466

Dorothy Edwards

Dorothy Edwards dreamt up 'My Naughty Little Sister' whilst on a family holiday in 1950. Dorothy based the character on her younger sister, Phyllis, and went on to write five books about her naughty little sister with wide acclaim. Dorothy became a household name and her stories were read and loved across the globe. She became a fixture of a radio show in the 1950s called Read with Mother and she also wrote for Playschool and Jackanory. Dorothy died in 1982, aged 68.

Book preview

Days by Dorothy Edwards

The Author, An Introduction

Dorothy Edwards, an only child, was born on the 18th August 1902 at Ogmore Vale in Glamorgan.

Her father was a headmaster and an early activist in the Independent Labour Party.  At age 9 Dorothy, dressed in red, welcomed Keir Hardy on to the stage at Tonypandy during the national coal strike of 1912. She was taught that revolution was at hand, that class barriers would be a thing of the past.

Dorothy won a scholarship and boarded at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before moving to University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire where she read Greek and philosophy.

Her early hopes to be an opera singer were set to one side after graduating and the death of her father. Instead she took on part-time work to supplement her mother’s pension with whom she now lived.

Dorothy managed to write a number of short stories which appeared in the literary journals of the day.  She spent several months with her mother in Vienna, all the time revising or writing before embarking on ‘Winter Sonata’, a short novel published in 1928.

Introductions to several members of the Bloomsbury Group meant a move to London and a division of her time between child-care for the family of Bloomsbury author David Garnett and the promise of an advance payment for her work on a new volume of stories.

However, Dorothy’s life was starting to spiral out of control; she was attracted to the Welsh nationalist movement but felt that her Welsh provincialism made her, in London at least, feel socially inferior. Leaving her mother dependent on a hired companion consumed her with guilt as did the end of an affair with a married musician.

On the 5th January 1934, having spent the morning burning her papers, Dorothy Edwards threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station.

Her suicide note read: I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.

Days

Mr George Morn, the novelist, began to write about the people and the scenes of the district around his old home only when he was already over forty, and almost as soon as he had begun to be recognised for these novels as a very great artist, it suddenly seemed to him that all he should ever want for the rest of his life would be to live among these old scenes and he immediately bought a house a few miles from the house where he was born, and  since then he has hardly been seen or heard of.

The house that he bought was exceedingly ugly, built of dark stone. There was certainly no idea of beauty in the mind of the man who designed it. All around it was a high wall enclosing a garden full of stones. And outside the wall the road curved over the stretches of short grass with a certain monotony.

George Morn came here in January, and he strolled through the cold rooms and walked about the country in the biting wind, and so far from noticing any of this ugliness he was overjoyed at being there, and his new novel, which he had intended to work at