Rhys Davies A Writer's Life

Drawing on heretofore unavailable sources, including many conversations with the writer’s brother, this biography of Rhys Davies sheds light on the very private life of one of the most dedicated, prolific, and accomplished Welsh prose writers. A homosexual man in the days before the Sexual Offences Act, Davies was an exceedingly discrete indidivual who kept others at arm’s length. Still, Meic Stephens delves into his life with alacrity. He describes the writer’s early years as the Blaenclydach grocer’s son, his abhorrence of “chapel culture,” his bohemian years in Fitzrovia, his visit to D. H. Lawrence in the south of France, his unremitting work ethic, his patrons, his admiration for the French and Russian writers who were his models, and his love-hate relationship with the Rhondda Valley in Wales. Most importantly, however, Stephens discusses the dissembling that went into Print of a Hare’s Foot, a nominal autobiography by Davies’ which the author shows to be an unreliable account. This biography provides a perspective from which Rhys Davies’ very real achievement can more easily be appreciated.

Meic Stephens is a former literature director of the Welsh Arts Council and the founder of Poetry Wales magazine. He is the author, the editor, or the translator of a number of anthologies, including the Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales and the Writers of Wales series.