(Morgan) Glyn Jones Biography

I began my literary life as a poet. In 1934 I first became friendly with Dylan Thomas, who suggested I should write short stories, as he himself was doing then. My first published book was a volume of short stories, The Blue Bed. This was written when the great industrial depression was at its most intense in South Wales and the longest story in the book takes this for its subject. South Wales, industrial and agricultural—this is the theme in all the stories in The Blue Bed. Indeed, all my prose, and much of my poetry, is concerned with this region. The novel The Valley, The City, The Village, which is partly autobiographical, tries to convey what it was like to grow up in South Wales; The Learning Lark deals with learning and teaching in the area; The Island of Apples describes childhood and its fantasies in a closely knit community in the Welsh valleys.

The Water Music has stories about both the industrial east of South Wales (Glamorgan) and the agricultural west (Carmarthen, Pembroke, Cardigan). To quote my publisher—I have "carried the medium [i.e., the imaginative short story] to an unexcelled synthesis of realism and fantasy, magic and humor. From the regional contrasts of industrialism and pastoralism, modernity and tradition, he builds up a world of convincing beauty, and expresses himself in a prose style of unusual poetic vitality." I would accept this as a statement of what I have tried to do in my short stories. Whether I've done it is of course quite another question.

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