Kate Roberts

Katie Gramich

Description

When the Welsh writer Kate Roberts died in 1985 at the age of 94, the Times obituary noted that 'she was felt by many to rank with Maupassant as one of the leading European short story writers'. Roberts is widely acknowledged as the major twentieth-century novelist and short story writer to have written in the Welsh language, being known and revered in Wales as 'the Queen of our Literature'. Much of her work has been translated into English and other languages and yet she remains today relatively little known and under-appreciated in comparison, for example, with other female contemporaries who wrote in English, such as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, and Elizabeth Bowen. This volume seeks to redress the balance, bringing the life and work of this extraordinary novelist, playwright, short story writer, journalist, and ardent political campaigner to the attention of the wider world audience that the sheer quality of her writing deserves.

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 février 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780708323397
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 60 Mo

Extrait

Writers of Wales

Kate Roberts

Katie Gramich

University of Wales Press

Writers of Wales

Kate Roberts

Editors: Meic Stephens Jane Aaron M. Wynn Thomas

Honorary Series Editor: R. Brinley Jones

Other titles in the Writers of Wales series: Geoffrey of Monmouth(2010), Karen Jankulak Herbert Williams(2010), Phil Carradice Rhys Davies(2009), Huw Osborne R. S. Thomas(2006), Tony Brown Ben Bowen(2003), T. Robin Chapman James Kitchener Davies(2002), M. Wynn Thomas

Writers of Wales

Kate Roberts

Katie Gramich

University of Wales Press Cardiff 2011

© Katie Gramich, 2011

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 copy- right owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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 978-0-7083-2338-0 e-ISBN 978-0-7083-2339-7

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

Typeset by Eira Fenn Gaunt, Fenn Typesetting Printed in Wales by Dinefwr Press, Llandybïe

Preface

That Kate Roberts (1891–1985) was the most important Welsh female novelist and short story writer of the twentieth century is a fact very few would dispute. She produced a large and various oeuvreextending over a period of over half a century. In addition to being a creative writer, she was an influential critic, journalist, editor and publisher, not to mention a political activist and one of the earliest members of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party – or the BB (Bloody Blaid) as she affectionately referred to it. One might say that she occupies a position in Welsh literature analogous to that enjoyed by Virginia Woolf in English literature, and yet the contrast in the amount and the quality of published critical writings on the two authors’ work could hardly be more stark. While the British Library integrated catalogue lists no fewer than 777 items with ‘Virginia Woolf’ in the title, there are only nineteen items on Kate Roberts, four of which are reprints of the same text by Derec Llwyd Morgan. This critical introduction to the life and work of Kate Roberts is intended to help remedy the regrettable ignorance of her achievement outside Wales, and to try to begin a contemporary re-engagement with and re-evaluation of her work within Wales.

The author would like to thank the copyright holder for permission to quote from the work of Kate Roberts.

Preface List of illustrations

1 2 3 4 5

Contents

‘Before 1917. . .’: the making of a writer From playwright to prose writer: 1917–1928 Finding a voice: 1928–1946 ‘The struggle of a woman’s soul’: 1946–1960 ‘This stiff, indomitable queen of Welsh letters’: 1960–1985

Notes Bibliography Index

v ix

1 14 38 72

9

4

109 118 123