Rhys Davies

Huw Edwin Osborne

Description

Davies was the holder of a complex identity: he was a gay man who grew up as a shopkeeper's son in the Rhondda who left Wales to write about his homeland in England. This book unravels a national experience that is deeply bound up in complex negotiations of class, sexuality, and gender and follows a career that was predicted to be that of "the representative Welshman".
The book is divided into three sections: the first begins with Davies’s childhood in Blaenclydach and the ways in which his memories of his childhood reinforce continuing themes in his stories and novels; the second will place Davies in literary London and address Davies’s struggle to enter the privileged circles of literary production, circulation, and reception; the final section considers the established Davies of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.

Sujets

• Literary Figures
• Lettres et linguistique
• Idioma inglés
• Biography
• English
• Autobiography
• Wales
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708322420
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Writers of Wales

Rhys Davies

Editors: Meic Stephens Jane Aaron M. Wynn Thomas

Honorary Series Editor: R. Brinley Jones

Writers of Wales

Rhys Davies

Huw Edwin Osborne

University of Wales Press Cardiff 2009

© Huw Edwin Osborne, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to The University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.

www.uwp.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-7083-2167-6 e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2242-0

The right of Huw Edwin Osborne to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Printed in Wales by Dinefwr Press, Llandybïe

Acknowledgements Abbreviations

Contents

Introduction 1 Little Lord Fauntleroy of the Valleys 2 ‘A rainbow wash of the mind’ 3 A bohemian in Grub Street 4 A ‘professional Welshman’ 5 A ‘natural amusing greed’ 6 A curious friendliness among the men 7 ‘The raw stuff of life’ 8 ‘Time and the Welsh mountains’ 9 ‘Strange embraces’ and ‘subtle pagan secrets’ 10 ‘One’s own interior liberty’ 11 ‘Down with passports to art’ 12 Dealing in dark murders 13 A ‘borderline case’ Conclusion

Bibliography Index

iv vi

1 7 16 26 36 42 50 58 68 76 84 96 104 123 132

136 143

Acknowledgements

I owe a particularly heavy debt of gratitude to Dr Gary Kelly for his invaluable guidance and mentoring when I began researching Rhys Davies as a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alberta. I am also grateful to Dr Patricia Rae and Dr Heather Zwicker for their long-term and enthusiastic support of and interest in my work. Thanks are also due to the many friends and colleagues, including everyone here in the Department of English at the Royal Military College of Canada, especially Dr Heather Evans, with whom I have shared discussions on Davies throughout the years. My under- standing of Davies’s personality and character were enriched by the recollections of Charles Lahr’s daughters, Oonagh and Sheila, for whose time and generosity I am grateful. Thanks are also due to the archivists at the National Library of Wales, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, and especially to Ali Burdon and Alun Ford at the University of London’s Sterling Library. An additional special thanks is due to Jean Rose at the Random House Archives and Library for going so far above and beyond her duties to provide resources that deepened my understanding of Davies’s career. I am also grateful to Sarah Lewis at the University of Wales Press for her kind and diligent assistance at every stage of this book’s life, from proposal to publication. Thanks also to Emeritus Professor Meic Stephens for his keen editorial eye and for his expert and generous insights. Last, but not least, thanks to Cory for his patience and support. Any faults in this text are my own responsi- bility, and they remain despite the assistance of these people. For permissions to reproduce photographs of Rhys Davies, I thank the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre and the Estate of

Rhys Davies. For permission to reproduce the photograph of Davies in Final Marina, I thank the Sterling Library, University of London. For permission to reproduce the photograph of Clydach Vale, I thank Reflective Images (http://www.wales-pictures.com). For permission to reproduce William Roberts’s cover art forThe New Coterie, I thank the William Roberts Society. For permission to quote from the account ledgers and correspondence in the William Heinemann archives, I thank the Random House Group Ltd.

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