Ffeil 1/48 - Correspondence : 1984

Arthur Glyn Prys-Jones (1888-1987) was an Anglo-Welsh poet, writer and educationalist. He was born on 7 March 1888 in Denbigh. His mother died in 1895 and his father remarried and moved the family to Pontypridd, Glamorgan, in 1898. At the age of 13 he went to Llandovery College, where he appears to have known the poet Dudley G. Davies (1891-1981). In 1908 he won a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, to read history, graduating in 1912; he became friends with T. E. Lawrence there. He went to teach in Macclesfield, Walsall and then Dulwich College, London. In 1919 he married Betty Gibbon of Pontypridd, shortly before being appointed Assistant Inspector of Schools for Carmarthenshire, later Staff Inspector for Secondary Education in Wales. He settled in Cardiff where, in 1932, he became one of the founders of the Little Theatre for which he wrote plays. He retired in 1949 and was awarded an OBE. He left Cardiff in 1951, moving to Wimbledon. He produced six volumes of his own poetry, Poems of Wales (Oxford, 1923), Green Places (Llandysul, 1948), A Little Nonsense (Cowbridge, 1954), High Heritage (Llandybie, 1969), Valedictory Verses (Llandysul, 1978) and More Nonsense (Cowbridge, 1984). He also wrote prose, including Gerald of Wales (London, 1955) and The Story of Carmarthenshire (2 vols, Llandybie, 1959, 1972). He edited Welsh Poets (London, 1917), an anthology of Anglo-Welsh poets, and co-edited National Songs of Wales (London, 1959). He regularly wrote reviews in the Western Mail and from 1937 to 1960 broadcast frequently on BBC radio. In 1970 he was elected President of the Welsh Academy's English-language section. He and his wife Betty had two children, David and Barbara. She died in 1976 and he spent his last years in Kingston-upon-Thames, dying there on 21 February 1987, aged 98. Collected Poems (Llandysul, 1988), edited by his friend Don Dale-Jones (b. 1935), was published after his death.