Caradoc Evans - The Devil in Eden

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Cofiant Caradoc Evans, nofelydd dadleuol, a newyddiadurwr a dramodydd a ddigiodd ei gyd-Gymry drwy ei waith. Mae'r cofiannydd John Harris yn archwilio corff ei waith ac yn datgelu manylion am fywyd a gyrfa Caradoc Evans nad oedd yn wybyddus cynt.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Caradoc Evans - The Devil in Eden is the definitive biography of the controversial novelist, journalist and playwright whose work outraged his fellow Welshmen and challenged the political and religious consensus. John Harris explores Evans' oeuvre, and reveals much unknown new information about the life and inflammatory career of an important author.

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Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Formerly a lecturer in bibliography at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, John Harris has edited numerous works by Caradoc Evans and written extensively on Anglo-Welsh publishing history. He is the compiler of A Bibliographical Guide to Twenty-Four Modern Anglo-Welsh Writers (1994) and the editor of Goronwy Rees: Sketches in Autobiography (UWP, 2001). He also acted as consultant to a theatre production of My People (2015).

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

This study, the result of a lifetime's dedicated research work, is a pleasure to read. The author, Dr John Harris, previously a lecturer in bibliographical studies at Aberystwyth University, became strongly attracted by Caradoc Evans, hitherto a rather neglected figure, after he migrated to live in west Wales. He has already published a number of scholarly articles about Evans and has republished several of his fictional works accompanied by new, authoritative introductions and footnote references. He also acted as consultant to a theatre production of Caradoc Evans's first major work My People (2015). 'We can't know too much about Caradoc' was the much-needed prompt which Dr Harris required from Professor Gwyn Jones, doyen of Anglo-Welsh studies for a number of decades. And it was Jones who allowed Harris to quarry at his own home the most substantial archive of Caradoc Evans's papers, now part of the massive Gwyn Jones Papers in the custody of the National Library. And it is these precious correspondence and papers, buttressed by a formidable amount of secondary reading and further research, which forms the backbone of the present study. Caradoc Evans (1878–1945) was a controversial novelist, journalist and playwright whose work outraged his fellow Welshmen, offended the sensibilities of the age and challenged the political and religious consensus of the first half of the twentieth century. His early corpus of short stories during the Great War was condemned as 'a farrago of filth and debased verbal coinage' by outraged reviewers. Harris portrays vividly Evans’s upbringing at Rhydlewis in rural Cardiganshire. Straightened family circumstances compelled the youth to migrate to London in 1893 where he scraped an existence which he loathed as a draper's assistant, was duly sacked from a succession of lowly positions, attended a number of evening classes, and made his earliest forays into fee-paying journalistic work with an occasional literary output too. It was indeed Fleet Street-based journalism which was to prove Evans's saviour. By the 1920s he had certainly won his spurs as a respected literary editor and had begun to publish works of fiction too. Due attention is given by Harris to Evans's divisive furiously assailed first major work, a collection of short stories entitled My People (1915), widely regarded today as the first genuinely Anglo-Welsh publication. Other works of fiction flowed from Evans's pen, among them Capel Sion (1916) and My Neighbours (1919). His Taffy: a Play of Welsh Village Life (1924) soon served to make Caradoc Evans, we are told, 'the best-hated man in Wales' by 1925. All these works are discussed fully here together with fascinating details of the rapid development of Evans's career as a literary editor in the 1920s, and by 1930 he had placed a first novel with Faber. We are kept informed, too, of Evans's bizarre personal and family life – his failed first marriage from 1907, his refuge in excessive alcohol, and the invasive influence of Marguerite Barclay, the exotic woman and established writer of romantic fiction who became Evans's second wife, and who took him first to Gloucestershire and then to Aberystwyth, partly to reside near his ailing mother, and where the couple made a hugely costly foray into theatre work where they certainly burned their fingers badly. Further moves followed in rapid succession to London, Broadstairs and then a return to Wales, to live at a house called Brynawelon at New Cross near Aberystwyth, where both husband and wife continued to devote themselves to their literary work despite the exigencies of another war which, in the opinion of Evans's wife, very sadly 'broke his health and his brain'. Here Caradoc's health deteriorated rapidly having contracted pneumonia and here he died of heart failure in the spring of 1945. This fascinating volume is a long read requiring patience, interest and commitment. But it is undoubtedly the last word on Caradog Evans, written in a fluid prose style and supported by helpful endnote references, a detailed index and a good selection of photographs dating from successive periods in the author’s life. J. Graham Jones