Katie Gramich – författare

Twentieth-Century Women's Writing in Wales documents Welsh women's writing in both Welsh and English in the twentieth century. It identifies a distinctive female literary tradition in which Wales is represented as a 'different country' by its modern women writers; a country in which both Welshness and womanhood are variously lived and performed. This volume is arranged chronologically and deals with a wide range of literary genres, including the short story; the novel; poetry; autobiography, travel writing and drama. It affords long-overdue serious critical attention to the works of early twentieth-century women writers - from the comical short stories of Jane Ann Jones to the powerful naturalist novels of Elena Puw Morgan and free-thinking 'New Woman' Bertha Thomas - while also dealing with better-known literary figures such as Kate Roberts and Gillian Clarke. This pioneering study of twentieth-century writing by Welsh women provides a much-needed alternative literary history to the stereotypical land of male bards.

This is an introduction to the life and work of Kate Roberts, the most important woman writer ever to have emerged from Wales. It offers a comprehensive account of her life, from her birth into a life of poverty and hardship in the slate-quarrying region of Snowdonia to her death almost a hundred years later in Denbigh; in between, she had attended University, at a time when very few Welsh women did, worked as an impassioned and inspirational teacher in the south Wales valleys, run a major printing press and published the main Welsh national newspaper, Y Faner, helped to found Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party, campaigned tirelessly for the Welsh language, challenged gender stereotypes and restrictions in traditional patriarchal Wales, and produced a body of literary work in the Welsh language which makes her rank alongside Saunders Lewis as the greatest Welsh writer of the twentieth century.

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.

Margiad wrote about the elderly, about love between women, about elusive, enigmatic characters. She is renowned for her ability to depict place, yet she also makes place reflective of the emotional and spiritual lives of her characters and her own concerns as an artist. Evans was a border writer, concerned with cultural complexity and conflict characteristic of borderlands, but also filled with passion for the landscape of the borders and the many meanings, local and figurative; she effortlessly invests in the places she loved. Her life was transformed in later years by epilepsy, followed by the diagnosis of a brain tumour that lead to her early death, on the evening of her forty-ninth birthday, in 1958. Evans wrote A Ray of Darkness, an acclaimed autobiography about her experience of epilepsy, and as a result Margiad Evans is being 'rediscovered' by the medical community as it becomes more interested in patient experiences. This collection of essays assesses Evans's extraordinary literary legacy, from her use of folktale and the gothic to the influence of her epilepsy on her creative work.

This collection of essays rediscovers and reassesses the extraordinary literary legacy of the border writer, Margiad Evans (1909-48) - novelist, poet, short story writer and autobiographer.

Margiad wrote about the elderly, about love between women, about elusive, enigmatic characters. She is renowned for her ability to depict place, yet she also makes place reflective of the emotional and spiritual lives of her characters and her own concerns as an artist. Evans was a border writer, concerned with cultural complexity and conflict characteristic of borderlands, but also filled with passion for the landscape of the borders and the many meanings, local and figurative; she effortlessly invests in the places she loved. Her life was transformed in later years by epilepsy, followed by the diagnosis of a brain tumour that lead to her early death, on the evening of her forty-ninth birthday, in 1958. Evans wrote A Ray of Darkness, an acclaimed autobiography about her experience of epilepsy, and as a result Margiad Evans is being 'rediscovered' by the medical community as it becomes more interested in patient experiences. This collection of essays assesses Evans's extraordinary literary legacy, from her use of folktale and the gothic to the influence of her epilepsy on her creative work.

This is an introduction to the life and work of Kate Roberts, the most important woman writer ever to have emerged from Wales. It offers a comprehensive account of her life, from her birth into a life of poverty and hardship in the slate-quarrying region of Snowdonia to her death almost a hundred years later in Denbigh; in between, she had attended University, at a time when very few Welsh women did, worked as an impassioned and inspirational teacher in the south Wales valleys, run a major printing press and published the main Welsh national newspaper, Y Faner, helped to found Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party, campaigned tirelessly for the Welsh language, challenged gender stereotypes and restrictions in traditional patriarchal Wales, and produced a body of literary work in the Welsh language which makes her rank alongside Saunders Lewis as the greatest Welsh writer of the twentieth century.

Dew On The Grass, first published in 1934, was Eiluned Lewis' first novel and immediately enjoyed both popular success and critical acclaim. A semi-autobiographical account of childhood in rural Montgomeryshire in the early years of the twentieth century, Lewis' novel focuses on Lucy, nine years old, dreamy, accident-prone and acutely alive to the world around her. Lewis' prose is a delight: sensuous, evocative and nostalgic. Here is a book which distils all the joys and agonies of childhood and seems to speak directly to us all of our own lost selves.

A reprint of the 1906 classic. Set in a seaside village of West Wales at the time of the 1904 Revival, the novel explores the lives and complex loves of several key characters, set against an enthralling Welsh landscape.

This collection of essays examines the wide diversity of the Welsh nation's heritage, highlighting in differing ways certain unexplored avenues of Welsh cultural experience. The contributions range from the historical to the literary and linguistic.

The definitive collection of Welsh women's poetry through the ages, this book includes classic poetry from the 15th century right up to contemporary works by living poets such as Menna Elfyn, Sheenagh Pugh, Glenda Beagan, Gillian Clarke and Elin ap Hywel. With poetry printed in both its original language and in English, the reader is able to discover the depths and extent of Welsh women's writings. With an extensive introduction, this collection is essential for schools, colleges, universities and all those with an interest in Welsh women's poetry.

The definitive collection of Welsh women's poetry through the ages, this book includes classic poetry from the 15th century right up to contemporary works by living poets such as Menna Elfyn, Sheenagh Pugh, Glenda Beagan, Gillian Clarke and Elin ap Hywel. With poetry printed in both its original language and in English, the reader is able to discover the depths and extent of Welsh women's writings. With an extensive introduction, this collection is essential for schools, colleges, universities and all those with an interest in Welsh women's poetry.