Davies, Rhys, 1901-1978.

Person

Davies, Rhys, 1901-1978.

Rhys Davies was born Rees Vivian Davies in Clydach Vale, Rhondda and educated at Porth County School. His parents were both Welsh-speaking but did not pass on their native tongue to their son. The young Davies found the conservative chapel-going communities of the South Wales valleys unbearably stifling and, in 1918, he moved to London; although he would never again live permanently in South Wales, its landscape and people were to have a profound influence on his later writing. In 1928-1929 Davies spent some time in Paris and Nice and met the novelist D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda at Bandol, near Toulon. He worked at a series of subsistence jobs whilst pursuing his literary career, including as a civilian at the War Office between 1939 and 1941. His first collection of short stories, The Song of Songs, and his first novel, The Withered Root, were both published in 1927. The 1930s saw a prolific outpouring of Davies's literary work, including seven collections of stories, six novels and three novellas; they included stories published in The Things Men Do (1936) and A Finger in Every Pie (1942), and his most notable novels Jubilee Blues (1938) and Black Venus (1944). Two further collections of stories - Selected Stories and Collected Stories - were published in 1945 and 1955 respectively. After the Second World War, Davies sought out a new market in the United States, publishing stories in The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post. Despite never achieving major finanical success in his career, Davies was nevertheless rewarded in other ways, being presented with an OBE in 1968 and, in 1970, being awarded by the Welsh Arts Council for contributions to Anglo-Welsh literature. In the last decade of his life, Davies published the novels Nobody Answered The Bell (1971) and Honeysuckle Girl (1975). He lived an unsettled lifestyle, staying at a succession of friends' homes. Davies died of lung cancer at St Pancras Hospital, London. The Best of Rhys Davies (1979), his novel Ram with Red Horns (1996) and Collected Stories (ed. M. Stephens, 1996, 1998) were all published posthumously. In 1990, the Rhys Davies Trust was established to promote Anglo-Welsh writing.

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