On the 18th of August, 1903, Dorothy Edwards was born in the mining community of Ogmore Vale in southern Wales, to Edward and Vida, who met when he was a headmaster and she a teacher in the Tynewydd Infants and Juniors Mixed School.

Dorothy’s fiction is an ironic choice for #ReadingWales however, as she’s known for her English settings. And I should have known this, because last year I read her short stories in Rhapsody (1927), but I’d loved the stories so much I couldn’t wait to read Winter Sonata (1928).

I’d planned to only glance at the stories, but I reread them after all. (This happened to me with another novel recently, too, and I’m trying to pay more attention to reading moods, to fall into certain rereads when I feel the pull.) And because I still remembered many of them rather well, I studied to see what made them so appealing for me.

What I’ve said before, is the way in which Edwards focuses on solitary-and-sometimes-melancholy characters, how she inhabits these men and women so that she can make observations that feel cool and true, but without sacrificing all the warmth, so that we also feel for them.

And most often we feel a sort of sympathy for them, for their small (and large) disappointments (and sorrows). But there are also moments of joy and comfort. Often, as you would guess from the titles, via music: played or heard. But also as they move through landscapes—though sometimes those too can be stormy—or read a book or  peer through a particular window or spend an evening in conversation.

There are often plants and trees throughout the stories (so many trees in Winter Sonata, their shading altered slightly as the season unfolds), and a queer way of knitting ideas of growth and stagnation.

They are not predictable stories and not like other stories I associate with the turn of the last century. There is something both rhythmic but disruptive about the stories’ endings, and these secure my interest.

As here: “We put the tree in. I have never heard whether it grew or not. Just as the sun was rising we walked back, and that morning I went away.”

And you might think, from that, she’s a spare and concise stylist, but her language shifts to mirror the narrators. So consider this other ending, where the phrases unfurl, outward from only talk of awkwardness to a swell of emotion:

“Of course it was all very awkward for him, and it is not easy to fit in exactly with a young girl’s ideas of life, for it is for her still very much like a fairy tale, and yet it seems a pity that something so very like a flower, like a young rose, you know, should have to cry all night.”

In another mood, I think I could find these endings dissatisfying, annoying even. But if I have been in that sort of mood when I picked up her collection, she pulled me into her orbit so tidily that I was ready for them.

Winter Sonata fits with the stories in the sense that there is a similar simplicity and loneliness to Arnold Nettle’s life, as he works in the post office. (In Claire Flay’s study of DE’s work, she highlights that this is the first time DE’s own working-class background features in her work—her other characters live more leisurely, practice their instruments and study their translations.)

His shifts end at 6 and, mostly, he returns to his (boarded) room, spends his evenings playing his cello. There are two children in the home and the oldest, Pauline, sneaks out to hang with the boys at choir practice, and gets back into the house via Nettle’s part of the house, to remain undetected by her mother. (Pauline’s mother isn’t fooled—she says nasty things about Pauline and slaps her around; nobody gets hit in Rhapsody—although husbands cheat on their wives and wives dream of cheating on their husbands—but working-class life is rough, judgements harsh.)

Soon, however, Nettle comes to spend more time in another household, which is where the story truly launces. And by that , I mean there are some conversations and misunderstandings, and there is talk of love and evidence of both optimism and disappointment. This is a quiet sort of story, even though some of the characters are coming to profound realisations about what it means to live a good life, to decipher whom to trust, and to find a place you belong (when you haven’t been to many places at all).

Claire Flay’s study of Dorothy Edwards was fabulous reading alongside these two volumes. There are some letters about her family life (though, even there, very little about Wales itself), and the letter found in her pocket, after she’s been found dead, is also reproduced. It is heart-breaking, and even more so when Flay notes the instances in which certain elements had been echoed in her published work over the years.

It’s also interesting to learn about how difficult she had found it, simply to arrange the circumstances in which she could write a little. And to learn how it was for her, when David Garnett “discovered” her (he called her the Welsh Cinderella), triumphed her work, and introduced her to the Bloomsbury Group (he’d had higher hopes, and it seems she had too).

The essays by Elaine Morgan that introduce the Virago Modern Classic editions contain biographical information, but Flay’s work is much more detailed, and there are a few pages of glossy photographs too. DE did keep a diary, so there are excerpts from that, although the bulk of the book is about her writing.

One unexpected connection emerged with talk of how DE was influenced by classic stories, including the Demeter and Persephone myth, as well as The Mabinogion, which I’d just begun reading in Charlotte Guest’s translation. Bill has written about this as well, with a focus on “Kilhwch and Olwen” (I’ve not gotten to this tale yet, as I’m reading one every few days).

Flay points out a passage in Winter Sonata where a character out walking describes the experience of never nearing a young girl also out for a walk ahead—“I felt as though some wicked fairy was keeping the distance between us always the same”—and quotes the corollary from the tale about Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, in the first branch of these ancient Celtic tales. It’s always wonderful when stories seem to knit together like this (though I was disappointed not to have noticed even the allusion to the myth I did know!).

My favourite detail was to learn of the care that Edwards paid to Winter Sonata, to the way it developed from the germ of an idea (captured in another letter), the way it seems like Nettle found neighbours for his own self, even as Edwards was writing into the darkness with him.

And, most curiously, her delicate use of repetition. There are snippets of phrases, echoes of observation, that appear throughout the novel (just over 200 pages long, with generous margins and font) at intervals, in just the way that musical phrases reappear during a sonata.

Thanks to Karen for hosting #ReadingWales this month and encouraging us to read more widely; she’s joined by Kathryn this year. Shout-out to the previous host, Paula, who hosted when I had ready access to a larger library system with more contemporary Welsh authors in their collection.