Library of Wales: The Valley, The City, The Village

Glyn Jones was born in 1905. One of the giants of twentieth-century Welsh writing, he published novels, poetry, short story collections, translations and works of criticism until his death in 1995. He received several awards for his contributions to literature in Wales. Brought up in a Welsh-speaking, chapel-going family, Glyn Jones was educated in English, which remained his primary writing language, although he read and spoke fluent Welsh. The first chairman and then vice president of Yr Academi Gymreig (English section), he was deeply concerned with supporting the literature of both languages.

An artist at heart, Trystan Morgan grows up in his grandmother’s valley mining cottage, duty-bound by her deep wish for him to be a preacher. He comes from farming stock and longs to paint the Welsh countryside of his people. But he agrees to study at the city university although his adolescent mind revolts at the social posturing around him.Trystan’s journey through the conflicting cultural, social and political values of his country in the mid-twentieth century is bewildering but finally liberating. And through the glittering, crowded, kaleidoscopic images of this bravura novel, the author creates a rich impression of people and place; a Wales which is a landscape of the mind.Glyn Jones was one of the giants of twentieth-century Welsh writing whether as short story writer, critic or poet, and here in his remarkable novel of 1956, he creates a narrative of exceptional power that draws on all these gifts.*******************************************The Valley, the City, the Village focusies on the artistic and personal journey of Trystan Morgan through the conflicting cultural, social and political values of Wales in the mid-twentieth century. Glyn Jones was one of the major figures of Welsh writing whether as a short story writer, critic or poet, and here in this post-war novel he creates a story that grips with his own personal history. This from the opening of the book:'Rosser’s Row, to which my grandmother and my Uncle Hughie had brought me to live, was a colliers’ terrace, standing on the bank of the black river oiling down the cwm…. Trefor and I came out of the row and crossed the iron bridge over the river, but we were not going to school because we did not like Knitty Evans. Knitty was our teacher, a bellower and a bull-roarer, always very masterful and intolerant towards us… at the end of every lesson he rose up and came skirmishing amongst the class with his dirty cane, bellowing and bringing bad feelings and oppression, his long black hair displaced and dangling down over his ears like a pair of wings.'