Library of Wales Series

A sensation when first published in 1894, this frightening story involves evil scientists and the women that become monsters at their hands. An experiment into the sources of the human brain through the mind of a young woman has gone horribly wrong—she has witnessed the God Pan and will die giving birth to a daughter, Helen Vaughan. Twenty years later Helen becomes the source of much fevered speculation when she is feted as a society hostess of great charm. Many men are infatuated with her beauty, but great beauty has a price. Linking horror with prurient sexuality, this classic of horror sheds light on late Victorian misogyny and the public’s interest in theories of evolutionary degeneration.

The Library of Wales’ Story anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social, and economic turbulence of 20th-century Wales and beyond. More than 80 outstanding works from the classics of Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies, Arthur Machen, and Gwyn Thomas to the almost forgotten brilliance of work by Margiad Evans and Dilys Rowe and then forward to the prize-winning work of Emyr Humphreys, Rachel Trezise, and Leonora Brito, coloring and engaging in the life of a changed country. Story Volume 1 depicts a Wales wracked by a driving capitalism, shriven by hypocrisy and soon devastated by two world wars, but still creative, resilient, and sometimes laughing uproariously. The writers produced stories to entertain, engage, and share in the intimate lives of a distinctive people. In this selection Dai Smith has crafted an anthology that gives a unique insight into the life of a country and the talent of its major writers.

During the miners' strike in the 1980s, a worker is killed in the striking coalfields of Wales. Some months later, a government minister thought to be connected with the death is also shot. Lewis Redfern—once a radical but now a political analyst and journalist—pursues the sniper, a lonely hunt that leads him through an imbroglio of civil service leaks to a secret organization: a source of insurrection far more powerful than anyone could have suspected known as the Volunteers. In this fast-paced narrative of espionage and intrigue, Redfern, through his obsessive pursuit of justice, finally encounters the truth about himself as the novel discusses the conflict between moral choice and political loyalty.

The Library of Wales’ Story anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social, and economic turbulence of 20th-century Wales and beyond. More than 80 outstanding works from the classics of Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies, Arthur Machen, and Gwyn Thomas to the almost forgotten brilliance of work by Margiad Evans and Dilys Rowe and then forward to the prize-winning work of Emyr Humphreys, Rachel Trezise, and Leonora Brito, coloring and engaging in the life of a changed country. Story Volume 2 depicts a Wales facing up to a dramatically changed culture and society in a world where the old certainties of class and money, of love and war, of living and surviving do not hold. The writers explore the spirit of a country while the ground keeps shifting beneath them. In this selection Dai Smith has crafted an anthology that gives a unique insight into the life of a country: identity, language, class, and sex are all explored intensely in this kaleidoscope of the best of the last 50 years of Welsh short fiction.

Drawing upon his Welsh and Jewish heritage, Dannie Abse presents a rich autobiography that chronicles his life as both a doctor and an author. Humorous and poignant, this new edition not only includes the acclaimed first volume A Poet in the Family, but also discusses the changes in the political and literary landscape over the last century. With a chapter featuring brand new material by the author, this must-read autobiography will entertain those interested in history, politics, and literature.

A beautiful and personal account, this memoir recalls the time spent by Brenda Chamberlain on the Greek Island of Ydra in the early 1960s. Sea and harbor, mountain and monastery, her neighbors and friends are unforgettably pictured; these were the realities outside herself while within there was a conflict of emotion and warring desires. Joy and woe are woven fine in this record: the delight of a multitude of fresh experiences thronging to the senses, the suffering from which she emerges with new understanding of herself and human existence.

On a frozen winter’s day, Mary Bicknor, the companion of a wealthy old woman, marries Easter Probert, whose child she is expecting. She cries bitterly throughout the service, which has been engineered by the vicar. Easter has no wedding ring for her, and though he lends her a silver ring of his own, he soon snatches it back—cursing her traitorous flesh—and boards a bus without her. Shocked, the vicar tries to tell himself he has done the right thing, but Mary, left to walk home alone, knows that misery lies ahead with the brutish Mr. Probert.

Extremely controlled studies of constrained desire, loneliness, and incomplete relationships, these tales fostered Edwards' development of a nonrealist world of imagery and symbolism in her own language. The ten stories of Rhapsody, together with the three previously uncollected pieces added to this edition, are utterly distinctive in voice and sensibility. At least three of the Rhapsody stories—"A Country House," "Days," and the brilliant, enigmatic "A Garland of Earth"—are small masterpieces sure to by enjoyed by a whole new generation.

At the age of fifty, towards the end of the First World War, W. H. Davies decided that he must marry. Spurning London society and the literary circles where he had been lionised since the publication of his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, he set about looking for the right partner on the streets of London. Young Emma is a moving and revealing memoir told with disarming honesty and humour. Davies records his life with three women: from his affair with Bella, the wife of a Sergeant Major, to his year-long liaison with the gentle Louise, to the turbulent brushes with a society woman who fears for her own life at his hands. He finally meets Emma, then pregnant, at a bus-stop on the Edgware Road. This is the story of their love affair.

When railway signalman Harry Price suddenly suffers a stroke, his son Matthew, a lecturer in London, makes a return to the border village of Glynmawr. As Matthew and Harry struggle with their memories of personal and social change, a beautiful and moving portrait of the love between a father and son emerges.

Leonora Brito's literary career, though cut tragically short, produced some of the most unique, culturally diverse and fresh fiction the Welsh writing scene has encountered. Though Cardiff-born, Brito's work was frequently shaped by her Afro-Carribean roots, and her stories are characterised by an abundance of freethought and a striking singularity of perspective. Full of wry humor and startling originality, this collection features some of Brito's most acclaimed stories, including Mama's Baby (Papa's Maybe)', The Last Jumpshot', and Dat's Love.'

A rich depiction of the conflicting cultural, social, and political values in Wales in the 1900s, this powerful and exceptional narrative follows Trystan Morgan as he comes of age. An artist at heart, Trystan abandons his dreams of painting the Welsh countryside to instead fulfilla pledge to his grandmother to attend universityand become a preacher. Initially revolted bythe social posturing around him, he soon finds it liberating, as he ultimately finds his own way through the glittering, crowded, and kaleidoscopic world of mid-20th-century Wales.

Widely acclaimed for its warm humor, lyricism, and honesty, this accurate evocation of the 1930s has become a classic. In this delightful autobiographical novel, Dannie Abse skilfully interweaves public and private themes, setting the fortunes of a Jewish family in Wales against the troubled backdrop of the times: unemployment, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, and the Spanish Civil War.

Carwyn James treated rugby football as if it was an art form and aesthetics part of the coaching manual. He was the first man to coach any British Lions side to overseas victory, and still the only one to beat the All Blacks in a series in New Zealand. That was in 1971, and it was followed in 1972 by the triumph of his beloved Llanelli against the touring All Blacks at Stradey Park. His subsequent and successful career as broadcaster and journalist and then a return to the game as a coach in Italy never quite settled his restless nature. After his sudden death, his close friend Alun Richards set out to write what he called “A Personal Memoir” to reflect on the enigma that had been Carwyn.

Sometimes compared to The Catcher in the Rye, this rediscovered novel of the 1960s has a similar haunting sense that the adult world is phony and threatening. The hero of the book, Ashton Vaughan, has come home after a long absence from his Welsh seaside town. A member of the notorious Vaughan family, he has become a hopeless alcoholic drifter, but he moves in with his brother, aloof and eccentric, who still lives in the family home. Slowly, as Ashton reaches out to his loyal friends in town, it becomes clear that a violent vendetta had forced him to run away from home.

Lucian Taylor believes he has been damned through contact with an erotically pagan world—or possibly through something degenerate in his own nature—in this critically acclaimed horror story. Moving to London to shake off his fears of being trapped by the dark imaginings of a creature inside him, Taylor soon finds his hallucinations becoming increasingly real. An important and moving work, this story is one of the first explorations in fiction of the figure of the doomed artist. A forward that provides literary and historical context from renowned author Ramsey Campbell is also included.

A forgotten Welsh novel, first published in 1925, this love story is also a portrait of class conflict and the plight of rural women. The plot turns on young Rhys Lloyd's interest in the ideas of Social Darwinism and the League of Nations, which make him a dangerous figure in his village. To complicate his life further, Rhys is the son of a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist—but he is falling in love with the church-going Esther. The couple suffers from the disapproval of their neighbors, until—over time—the stoic and determined Esther calmly transcends the casual brutality of her agricultural upbringing, improves the lot of the other villagers, and finds new strength and organic spirituality.

After an elderly farmer dies, following an accident on a remote Welsh smallholding, he leaves the kingdom over which he had ruled so fiercely to his two daughters, Lucy and Cadi. As they prepare for the funeral, the novel—the last written by the prolific James Hanley—relates the events and experiences that made each sister what she is now: Lucy, the runaway, who fled the farm secretly and without warning, never to see the old man again, and Cadi, who promptly sacrificed her job as a teacher in Manchester to take Lucy’s place in her father’s lonely world, thus initiating a pattern of guilt, self-submission, self-reliance, and occluded rage that would last until his death. A haunting, elegiac evocation of hill-farm life, A Kingdom focuses on the connotations of the word “rooted” from its first line, exploring what it means, for good and ill, to be tied to such a place.

The experiences of a young destitute Welshman in America and Britain. William Henry Davies was born in a pub and learnt early in life to rely on his wits and his fistsand to drink. Around the turn of the century, when he was twenty-two, his restless spirit of adventure led him to set off for America, and he worked around the country taking casual jobs where he could, thieving and begging where he couldn’t. His experiences were richly coloured by the bullies, tricksters, and fellow-adventurers he encounteredNew Haven Baldy, Wee Shorty, The Indian Kid, and English Harry, to name but a few. He was thrown into prison in Michigan, beaten up in New Orleans, witnessed a lynching in Tennessee, and got drunk pretty well everywhere. A harrowing accident forced him to return to England and the seedy world of doss-houses and down-and-outs like Boozy Bob and Irish Tim. The pen of W. H. Davies, super-tramp and writer, reveals a fascinating picture of a vast, bustling continent intent on its own affairs and of a Britain on the cusp of change between old certainties and an uneasy future. When George Bernard Shaw first read the Autobiography in manuscript, he was stunned by the raw power of its unvarnished narrative. It was his enthusiasm, expressed in the Preface, that ensured the initial success of a book now regarded as a classic.