n the annals of Welsh literature there is an important figure whose name you perhaps might not recognise. It is that of Dorothy Edwards.
Writing at the height of modernism and a time of great social change in the world Edwards' critique of gender and class had an unquestionable Welsh bent fostered by her upbringing in Ogmore Vale, Bridgend. During her life she skirted on the periphery of the Bloosmbury group featuring writers such as Virginia Woolf, EM Forster, and Lytton Strachey.
But the English upper-class set would never fully accept Edwards as one of their own due to her so called "Welsh provincialism" and lower-middle-class background. After a number of setbacks in her life, including a failed love affair, guilt over her mother's ailing health, and her stalling writing career she took her own life by jumping in front of a train.
Edwards was born in 1902, the only child of a headmaster and schoolmistress. She was brought up with a political consciousness and socialist views, which saw her come into contact with founder of the Labour Party Keir Hardie and future Labour leader George Lansbury.
Speaking about her background Edwards' biographer Claire Flay-Petty said: "Her background is massively important to her. I think you see it coming through in her critique of class fundamentally. Ogmore Vale in the 1920s was a socialist hub and that socialist Wales would have been representative of Wales to her. They would actively discourage children from speaking Welsh in school and she tried to learn as an adult for a number of years – she was adept at languages. It was an absolutely integral point of view, mainly from a class and political point of view."
Edwards went onto to study at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff before reading Greek and philosophy at the University of South Wales and Monmouthshire. Flay-Petty said she became part of a circle of radically-minded women including writers Beryl Jones and Kathleen Freeman. She added: "She was more in line with her peer group than her background might suggest. She would never have fitted in in Ogmore Vale – her father was a headmaster which was quite unusual."
After spending time living in Vienna and Florence Edwards returned to live with her mother in Cardiff following the death of her father, which was a huge turning point in her life. It was then she decided she wanted to make her living as a writer.
Her best known works include the short story collection Rhapsody, published in 1927, and the novel Winter Sonata, published in 1928, a deconstruction of social and gender roles in a small English village. It set her apart from her fellow Welsh writers whose work depicted an industrial landscape in the realism tradition.
Commenting on her work Flay-Petty said: "I have argued that her literature was specific and a creation of her upbringing and her gender. In Wales it was focused on the industrial and male novelists were writing in a realist tradition. As a woman she was excluded from that environment and she created her own version on issues of gender, class, and colonialism. She was made aware by her father of Wales’ complex relationship with England and anyone who was the dominant other. There was experimental stuff happening at the time – Rhys Davies was writing differently to male novelists in Wales at the time and journals were seeking out work from Wales such as New Stories and Life and Letters Today."
Her work came to the attention of David Garnett, an author and member of the Bloomsbury group, who called her his "Welsh Cinderella" and he introduced her to various members including painter Dora Carrington who became a particular admirer of her writing. Facing financial difficulties Edwards took up an offer to move to London to live as a live-in nanny for the Garnett family in exchange for a wage, boarding, and a place to write.
It was a decision that came to haunt Edwards who felt guilty at leaving her mother with a hired companion in Wales. Flay-Petty said: "David Garnett came to their friendship from a condescending point of view and when she wasn’t overwhelmed and flattered by his offers he rejected her essentially. She did always want to write the great Welsh novel and I found her drafts of that work – that’s what she was working on while staying with the Garnetts. It was very much a work in progress."
Writer Gary Raymond suggested Edwards was not accepted in many literary circles due to a number of factors. He said: "She was eventually neglected or closed out by various communities which she felt she deserved a connection to. The Welsh-language literati of the day closed her out because she didn’t speak the language and the Anglo-Welsh community had a similar reaction to her because she was a woman – it was male-dominated. By the time she went to England and got involved on the periphery of the Bloomsbury group she found herself not accepted because she was Welsh and because she was white-collared middle-class – a much lower position in England than it was in Wales."
In 1933 Edwards returned to Wales to spend Christmas with her mother, reeling from a failed affair with married cellist Ronald Harding and frustrated about her financial dependence on the Garnetts. On Janaury 5, 1934, she spent the morning burning letters and an unpublished novel before Edwards threw herself in front of a train at Caerphilly railway station, tragically cutting her life short at 31 years old.
She left a suicide note, which 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."
Describing the circumstances of her death Flay-Petty said: "What was interesting about her suicide [was] in her letters to university friends she spoke about suicide to the point she spoke about it so much it became a matter of course. During the six months she lived with David Garnett she stopped talking about it. She is generally more silent and interacted less during that period.
"She clearly had long-standing severe mental health issues – a history of bipolar, being an only child, parents dependent on her, losing her father at a formative age. It may have possibly contributed, all of these issues."
A number of Edwards' poems were published after her death but her work remained largely forgotten for decades. An article was published in 1948 by her friend Beryl Jones which reclaimed Edwards' work from accusations by some Welsh writers she was a "Bloomsbury wannabe". Her major works were republished in the 1980s by Virago Press – a publishing company which specialised in works written by women. This led to a resurgence in her work and further interest into her life.
A play written by Gary Raymond could be put into production in 2023. He said: "There was a certain structure to her life which leant itself to creating a biographical stage work about her. Her writing is very literary on the page as it were but we have this musicality which lends itself to performance work. The titles of her work – Rhapsody and Winter Sonata – have musical connotations so the structure of her work lends itself to adaptation on the stage.
"I think the thing for me was that I found a real connection with her as a writer and a Welsh writer. A big part of her story is the fact she’s a woman and how that determined her experience in her relationships with other men and other women in society in Wales and outside of Wales."
The playwright and novelist said a number of people who had seen a work in progress of the play were "bowled over" as they were unaware of Edwards and her work. He added: "I’m a big admirer of her writing and you can’t go to her writing without coming to her true life story and how tragically cut short it was.... From an exuberant brilliant youth with that intellectual energy and how she became closed down and ignored before she got to the sad ending she did."
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