Rape of the Fair Country
| Rape of the Fair Country | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Alexander Cordell |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz |
| Publication date | Jan 1959 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Followed by | The Hosts Of Rebecca |
Rape of the Fair Country is a novel by Alexander Cordell, first published in 1959. It is the first in Cordell's "Mortymer Trilogy", followed by The Hosts Of Rebecca (1960) and Song of the Earth (1969).[1] The book has been translated into seventeen languages.
Cordell's style and subject matter are reminiscent of Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley.
[edit] Plot summary
The plot concerns the Welsh iron-making communities of Blaenavon and Nantyglo in the 19th century. The action is seen through the eyes of young Iestyn Mortymer who grows up in times of growing tensions between ironmasters and Trade Unionists. In 1826, when the book starts, Iestyn is eight years old and already beginning work at the Garndyrus furnaces near Blaenavon. His sister Morfydd has strong feelings about women and children working in mines and ironworks. She sympathises with the Chartist movement and condemns the action of the militant Scotch Cattle. In this she is in opposition to Hywel Mortymer, their conservative father who later begins to question his own loyalty to the ironmaster.
[edit] Story
Cordell's first successful novel draws the hardship of life in early industrial Wales with the father starting off as positive towards the Engish coal and iron masters of the time but then on seeing his family and neighbours suffer (and sometime die) he revolts with his son, Iestyn to protest. The family life leads to the fight for trade unions and the Chartist movement. The historical background against which the novel is set is described in considerable detail with profoundly researched events like the 1839 Newport Insurrection show this book to be worthy of the best seller it achieved in the UK as well as the USA. Cordell told of the story of the Chartist movement starting in Wales accurately and clearly like no other, but with a background of humanity of the Mortymer family.
[edit] Bibliography
- ^ Stephens, Meic (1986). The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales. OUP.
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