‘I have read it through from beginning to end, and would have read more of it had there been any more to read’ George Bernard Shaw

 

William Henry Davies was born in a pub and learnt early in life to rely on his wits and his fists—and 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 encountered. He was thrown into prison in Michigan, beaten up in New Orleans, witnessed a lynching in Tennessee, and got drunk pretty well everywhere.

 

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.

 

With a foreword by broadcaster and foreign correspondent, Trevor Fishlock, this Library of Wales edition also includes the original preface by George Bernard Shaw, who was instrumental in the book’s first publication.

 

You can purchase this book from the Parthian webstore here.

The second of Lewis Jones' two epic industrial novels of the 1930s.

 

Len, son of Big Jim and dynamic political organiser, takes centre stage in Lewis Jones' sequel to Cwmardy. Along his journey, he is influenced by Mary, a teacher, and the Communist Party, which becomes central to his work both underground and in union politics, and to his decision to leave and fight in the Spanish Civil War.

 

We Live paints a graphic portrait of the casual exploitation, tragedy and violence as well as the political hope and humanity of South Wales industrial workers from the 1900s to the 1930s.

 

You can purchase this title from the Parthian webstore here.

The first of Lewis Jones' two epic industrial novels of the 1930s.

 

Big Jim, collier and ex-Boer War soldier, and his partner Siân endure the impact of strikes, riots and war, while their son Len emerges as a sharp thinker and dynamic political organiser.

 

Cwmardy paints a graphic portrait of the casual exploitation, tragedy and violence as well as the political hope and humanity of South Wales industrial workers from the 1900s to the 1930s.

 

You can purchase this title from the Parthian webstore here.

Carwyn James treated rugby football as if it was an art form and aesthetics part of the coaching manual. This son of a miner, from Cefneithin in the Gwendraeth Valley, was a cultivated literary scholar, an accomplished linguist, a teacher, and a would-be patriot politician, who also won two caps for Wales. 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. These were the high-water marks of a life of complexity and contradiction. 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, alone in an Amsterdam hotel, his close friend, the Pontypridd-born writer, Alun Richards set out through what he called “A Personal Memoir” to reflect on the enigma that had been Carwyn. The result, a masterpiece of sports writing, is a reflection on the connected yet divergent cultural forces which had shaped both the rugby coach and the author; a dazzling sidestep of an essay in both social and personal interpretation.

 

“One of the most readable books on rugby... a stylish contribution to the game’s history.” The Times

 

“The best evocation there is of this charismatic if restless man.” Gerald Davies

 

“The Welsh persona is at the heart of Alun Richards’s book, so much so that the reader could be forgiven for imagining that Dylan Thomas played fly half for Swansea and that Harry Secombe hooked for Pontypool, and perhaps still does... untold pleasure and excitement.” Chris Laidlaw, The Sunday Times

 

“A craftsman, a wordsmith who can compel you to re-read and savour a sentence, a paragraph or a number of pages...” The Observer

 

“Stayed up half the night and cracked the dawn. Loved it.” Cliff Morgan

 

“A beautifully written insight into the very heart and soul of Welsh Rugby and a handsome addition to the literature of the game.” Bill McLaren

 

You can buy this title from the Parthian webstore here.

 

Aged fifty, acclaimed by the literary intelligentsia and exalted by London society since the publication of The Autobiography of the Super-Tramp in 1908, W. H. Davies finally decided to marry. Casting aside the praise and trinkets which populated his old life, he took to the streets of London to find a bride towards the end of World War One.

 

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 drunkard who fears her own murder at his hands, Davies lurches from happiness and affection to annoyance and apathy. That is, until he meets Emma.

 

A moving and revealing memoir of real life at the turn of the century,Young Emma is W. H. Davies’ frank and honest account of the relationship with the woman he encountered on a London street corner who was to become his wife.

 

Featuring a foreword by C. V. Wedgewood and an appendix by George Bernard Shaw.

 

“An extraordinary memoir destined to become a classic” Publishers Weekly

 

“Young Emma is a masterpiece, and stranger than any fiction” Sunday Telegraph

 

“Classic... remarkable... an extraordinary manuscript” The Observer

 

 

You can purchase A Time to Laugh from the Parthian store here.

 

 

 

 

 

Featuring writing by: Lewis Davies, Rachel Trezise, Leonora Brito, Nigel Jarrett, Tristan Hughes and many more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Featuring writing by: Gwyn Thomas, Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas, Alun Lewis, Arthur Machen, Alun Richards and many more.

 

 

 

 

 

The Water-castle is a journal of love, romance and discord in 1950s Germany as a Welsh artist and poet, Elizabeth Greatorex, travels with her French husband to meet her former lover Klaus, a German count.

 

Elizabeth maps a frost- and snow-bound landscape of desire against the hardening borders of a newly divided Germany. In her revealing diary, she records her struggle to bridge the distance between Wales and Germany, East and West while considering her own mythologised past and real diminished present.

 

Brenda Chamberlain’s writing pits creative idealism, emotional hunger and sexual longing against the brutal displacements of post-war Europe.

 

 

Brenda Chamberlain was born at Bangor in 1912. In 1931 she went to train as a painter at the Royal Academy Schools in London and five years later, after marrying the artist-craftsman John Petts, settled  in Caernarfonshire. During the Second World War she worked with her husband on the production of the Caseg Broadsheets. In 1947 she went to live on Bardsey (Ynys Enlli) where she remained until 1961. After six years on the Greek island of Ydra, she returned to Bangor; it was there, depressed and with financial problems, she died from an overdose of sleeping tablets in 1971.

 

 

A gothic tale of passion, violence, cruelty and unexpected tenderness. In this her third novel, Margiad Evans conjures a tempestuous and sometimes sinister world of rural and small town border life in early twentieth century.

 

 

Margiad Evans was born Peggy Whistler in Uxbridge in 1909, but it was the Border Country around Ross-on-Wye which became central to her consciousness and her writing. She took the name Margiad Evans to reflect this sense of identity. Her first novel, Country Dance, was published in 1932, and is known as 'The Welsh Wuthering Heights'. Her work includes Country Dance (1932); The Wooden Doctor (1933); Turf or Stone (1934), and Creed (1936), as well as non-fiction, short stories, autobiography and two collections of poetry, Poems from Obscurity (1947) and A Candle Ahead (1956) as well as two memoirs, including an account of her experiences of epilepsy. She died in 1958.