Rhys Davies: Decoding the Hare: Critical Essays to Mark the Centenary of the Writer's Birth

(Paperback)

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Rhys Davies (1901-1978) dedicated his life entirely to writing and is now generally regarded as one of the most prolific and accomplished of Welsh prose-writers in English. In addition to writing over one hundred short stories, his many novels included The Withered Root (1927), The Black Venus (1944) and The Perishable Quality (1957). While he has long been thought of as a master of the short story form, his novels are now considered to be among the finest written by a Welsh writer in English and a critical re-assessment of his career is long overdue. Rhys Davies: Decoding the Hare contains essays on the major aspects of Rhys Davies's life and work, from the literary, social and national contexts within which he wrote to issues of gender, sexuality and race. Published to mark the centenary of Rhys Davies's birth, Decoding the Hare is the first substantial study of his work and will be essential reading for all those interested in twentieth-century Welsh writing in English and in this complex and elusive writer in particular.

Reviews

'...this volume offers a rich variety of critical approaches to the work a writer of undeniable importance to Anglo-Welsh literature...an engaging and lively critical contribution to Welsh writing in English.' New Welsh Review

Author Bio

Meic Stephens is Lecturer in Writing at the University of Glamorgan and the Secretary of the Rhys Davies Trust. He has edited the work of Harri Webb, Glyn Jones and Rhys Davies, is the editor of The New Companion to the Literature of Wales and is also joint editor of the Writers of Wales series. Among the books he has translated are novels by Islwyn Ffowe Elis and Saunders Lewis and short stories and essays by contemporary Welsh writers.