Emyr Humphreys: Conversations and Reflections

(Paperback)

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Conversations and Reflections brings together the previously uncollected 'occasional writings' of Emyr Humphreys, the major novelist of twentieth-century Wales. It maps the historical and cultural background to the work of a writer who was described by R. S. Thomas as 'the supreme interpreter of Welsh life in English'. This selection of the most important essays published by Emyr Humphreys over a fifty-year period reveal the commanding range of his interests and confirm his stature as Wales's leading man of letters. Dealing with themes ranging from sixth-century literature to the twentieth-century media, these essays address the cultural commitments from which Emyr Humphreys' creative writing takes its bearings, as well as being a major author's statements on 'his' Wales, past and present. The essays are interwoven with a parallel series of discussions, conducted with M. Wynn Thomas, which explore many of the key personal, political and cultural concerns that have recurred throughout Emyr Humphreys' work. Conversations and Reflections provides a fascinating overview of the work of one of Wales' most significant creative writers and cultural activists.

Reviews

' ... a fascinating work of one of Wales's most significant creative writers and cultural activists.' The Western Mail 'We must be grateful to editor Wynn Thomas and the University of Wales Press for gathering together for this volume a batch of Emyr Humphreys's "occasional writings" and for presenting them with such originality, wrapped in a sequence of perceptive interviews between editor and author ... an indispensable guide ... ' Gwales

Author Bio

M. Wynn Thomas is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, University of Wales, Swansea. His many books include studies of Morgan Llwyd, Emyr Humphreys, The Page's Drift: R. S. Thomas at Eighty, Internal Difference: Writing in Twentieth-Century Wales, DiFfinio Dwy Lenyddiaeth Cymru, and Two Literatures of Wales.