Part of the Library of Wales series.

Born in 1903, a year before the Great Revival in Wales, and only eleven years of age at the outbreak of the First World War. Dorothy Edwards produced her first published works in 1927.

Edwards was a graduate of University College, Cardiff and although spent time in Vienna, Florence and London this was her permanent home. Clearly influenced by Chekhov the stories in Rhapsody are reminiscent of his work.

Sadly Edwards’ career was cut short by suicide in 1934.

The ten stories of Rhapsody, together with the three previously uncollected pieces added to this edition, are utterly distinctive in voice and sensibility. At least three of the Rhapsody stories – A Country House, Days, and the brilliant, allusive and enigmatic A Garland of Earth – are small masterpieces. Not bad by the age of twenty-four. All of them are extremely controlled studies of constrained desire, loneliness and incomplete relationships for which Edwards was developing a non-realist world of imagery and symbolism and her own language. Music is one of the motifs. For Edwards, music represents art, but also the possibility of sexual passion which is otherwise largely unstated but is everywhere a powerful undercurrent.