Our new ebook version of Dorothy Edwards' Rhapsody is now available for just 99p
Parthian are currently offering our new ebook edition of Dorothy Edwards' brilliant short story collection Rhapsody at 99p. For those who prefer physical books, this title forms part of the Library of Wales series.'I can't think of a more wonderful collection of stories than Rhapsody by Dorothy Edwards. It's a card-carrying masterpiece. Funny, creepy, and strangely beautiful.' - Dan Rhodes
"Dorothy Edwards is one of the most remarkable and remarkably neglected authors in the English language of the early twentieth century. Though she was celebrated briefly in her lifetime, after her suicide at the age of thirty-one in 1934, her two books, Rhapsody of 1927 and the novel Winter Sonata of 1928, went out of print. The Virago reprints of the mid-eighties, with thoughtful introductions by Elaine Morgan, were crucial acts of rescue, but Edwards deserves more. [...] At least three of the 'Rhapsody' stories - 'A Country House', 'Days', and the brilliant, allusive and enigmatic 'A Garland of Earth' - are small masterpieces. All of them are extremely controlled studies of constrained desire, loneliness and incomplete relationships." - Christopher Meredith, taken from the foreword of the Library of Wales edition of 'Rhapsody', now available on ebook.
Synopsis:
The ten stories of Rhapsody, together with the three previously uncollected pieces added to this edition, are utterly distinctive in voice and sensibility. At least three of the Rhapsody stories – ‘A Country House’, ‘Days’, and the brilliant, allusive and enigmatic ‘A Garland of Earth’- are small masterpieces. Not bad by the age of twenty-four. All of them are extremely controlled studies of constrained desire, loneliness and incomplete relationships for which Edwards was developing a non-realist world of imagery and symbolism and her own language. Music is one of the motifs. For Edwards, music represents art, but also the possibility of sexual passion which is otherwise largely unstated but is everywhere a powerful undercurrent.
About Dorothy Edwards:
Dorothy Edwards was born in 1903 in Ogmore Vale, a small mining community in Mid Glamorgan. Her father, an ardent socialist and Independent Labour Party leader, was the local school headmaster. After a scholarship to Howell’s School for Girls, Llandaf, she took a degree at Cardiff University in Greek and Philosophy, but literature was her passion and soon after graduating her short stories began to appear in magazines and journals. These were collected in Rhapsody (1927), along with several previously unpublished stories written during the nine months Edwards spent in Vienna and Florence. Her novel Winter Sonata (1928) followed shortly afterwards. She spent the following years trying to supplement her mother’s meagre pension by writing stories and articles for magazines and newspapers, and doing some extra-mural teaching at Cardiff University, but she never undertook full-time employment. After a brief period spent living in London with acquaintances from the Bloomsbury circle, Edwards committed suicide on a Cardiff railway line in 1934. A note left in her pocket at the time of her death read: ‘I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.’
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