Dorothy Edwards (1) (1902–1934)
Autor(a) de Winter Sonata
Para outros autores com o nome Dorothy Edwards, veja a página de desambiguação.
Obras de Dorothy Edwards
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Data de nascimento
- 1902-08-18
- Data de falecimento
- 1934-01-05
- Local de enterro
- Glyn Taff, Pontypridd, Wales, UK
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- Wales
UK - Local de nascimento
- Ogmore Vale, Wales, UK
- Local de falecimento
- Caerphilly, Wales, UK
- Locais de residência
- Ogmore Vale, Wales, UK
Cardiff, Wales, UK
Vienna, Austria
Florence, Italy
London, England, UK - Educação
- Cardiff University
Howell's School for Girls, Llandaff, Wales, UK - Ocupação
- novelist
poet
Welsh nationalist
short story writer - Pequena biografia
- Dorothy Edwards was born in a small mining valley near Cardiff, the daughter of a teacher and a headmaster. She was educated at her father’s boy’s school, at Howell's School for Girls in Llandaff, and at the University of Cardiff. She became a talented linguist, and went abroad to study languages in Vienna and in Florence, Italy, before returning to live with her widowed mother in Cardiff, determined to make a living as a writer. She became politically active, working for socialist and Welsh nationalist causes, but writing in English. She also was a talented amateur singer. She published two books in her lifetime: a collection of short stories called Rhapsody (1927, which was extremely well-received by the critics both in the UK and the USA; and the novel Winter Sonata (1928).
She went to live in London, where she met David Garnett, who introduced her to the other members of the Bloomsbury Group. To this day, Dorothy Edwards remains a somewhat enigmatic figure. She returned to her home at Pen-y-Dre, Rhiwbina, in Cardiff, and burned her papers and letters before committing suicide by throwing herself under a train near Caerphilly.
Membros
Resenhas
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 2
- Membros
- 249
- Popularidade
- #91,698
- Avaliação
- 3.3
- Resenhas
- 8
- ISBNs
- 181
- Idiomas
- 6
- Favorito
- 1
“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.”
How truly sad. This sadness certainly seeps into her writing, in a number of ways, particularly in the relationships which so often never find fulfilment.
It is perhaps odd that these stories don’t reflect the world that Dorothy Edwards herself lived in. Here we have the polite, ordered world of the English country house – worlds that are often disrupted by an outsider, a visitor usually. These are characters who unlike Edwards’ family, had no money worries, their money was unearned, and they live deep in the English countryside of Dorothy Edwards imagination. Her narrators are male, which I admit threw me in the first story Rhapsody. I’m so used to women writers of about this period writing from a female perspective that I simply assumed the first-person narrator of the title story was woman, a couple of pages in I became a tad confused and had to do a rapid reassessment.
Music was important to Edwards and in this collection, music, either the playing of it or the appreciation of it is, a recurring theme. In the title story, a young man (as I finally realised) named Elliott, recently returned from abroad, meets a Mr Everett, a music enthusiast who lives in the country outside of London with his invalid wife. Everett invites his new friend to spend part of his holiday with him and his wife. Elliott is a fellow musical enthusiast and occasional singer, as Everett learns soon after meeting him. Everett’s love of music, verges on the obsessional and he engages a governess for his young son whose accomplishments are more musical than academic – Everett is enchanted by her voice. The days become devoted more and more to music, and Everett watches in some discomfort as the two grow closer – while poor Mrs Everett fades daily.
There are great similarities between the story of Rhapsody and many of the other stories, where an outsider, either disrupts or bears witness to the disruption of a marriage. In A Country House, an electrician employed to bring electric light to a large house, is the outsider who disrupts. In A Garland of Earth an old man remembers the son of one of his school friends, who in turn introduces him to his daughter Rahel – a scientist who her father believes will be as great as Curie. Though the point of view of these stories is largely male – the power is held lightly by the women.
In The Conquered another young man; Frederick, goes to stay with an aunt on the Welsh Borders. Here he is thrown into company with his cousins Jessica and Ruth, and through them meets Gwyneth who has been teaching Ruth how to sing. Frederick is enthralled by Gwyneth, though in time he starts to see her differently.
“I remember how one night I went out by myself down in the direction of her house, where my steps always seemed to take me. When I reached the traveller’s-nightshade it was growing dark. For a moment I looked towards her house and a flood of joy came into my soul, and I began to think how strange it was that, although I have met so many interesting people, I should come there simply by chance and meet her. I walked towards the entrance of a little wood, and, full of a profound joy and happiness, I walked in between the trees. I stayed there for a long time imagining her coming gaily into the wood where the moonlight shone through the branches.”
(The Conquered)
Treachery in the Forest was one of my favourite stories. Mr Wendover spends his holidays in a cottage in a forest. Here he meets Mr and Mrs Harding, a couple who spend their time painting. The Hardings invite Mr Wendover to their house to play Bach for them, and so he is drawn into their lives, enjoying their company, looking forward to when he will see them again, delighting in the gift of hens’ eggs for them.
“Very carefully, two in one hand and one in the other. People who passed him, especially people in charabancs, laughed at him, though there was really nothing to laugh about.”
(Treachery in the Forest)
Another very memorable story is Summertime, in which Joseph Laurel goes to stay at a country house. Here he becomes smitten by a red-haired school girl, more than twenty years his junior. Joseph’s old friend Beatrice is of the party too, and Joseph can’t understand her sly little smiles, the amusement which, he suspects must be directed his way. Only when forced to recognise the girl’s youth, as he watches her walk away with a boy her own age, does he come to suspect the reason for Beatrice’s amused contempt.
These stories are quiet, beautifully controlled pieces. They will perhaps not suit everyone – especially those who like an obvious plot – but they are beautiful little masterpieces well worth seeking out.… (mais)