Kate Roberts

Author(s) Katie Gramich

Language: English

Genre(s): Biography

Series: Writers of Wales

  • February 2011 ·234x156mm

  • · Paperback - 9780708323380
  • · eBook - pdf - 9780708323397
  • · eBook - epub - 9781783162550

About The Book

This is an introduction to the life and work of Kate Roberts, the most important woman writer ever to have emerged from Wales. It offers a comprehensive account of her life, from her birth into a life of poverty and hardship in the slate-quarrying region of Snowdonia to her death almost a hundred years later in Denbigh; in between, she had attended University, at a time when very few Welsh women did, worked as an impassioned and inspirational teacher in the south Wales valleys, run a major printing press and published the main Welsh national newspaper, Y Faner, helped to found Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Nationalist Party, campaigned tirelessly for the Welsh language, challenged gender stereotypes and restrictions in traditional patriarchal Wales, and produced a body of literary work in the Welsh language which makes her rank alongside Saunders Lewis as the greatest Welsh writer of the twentieth century.

Endorsements

"In this remarkable work Katie Gramich draws on the full range of Robert's writings and on available secondary resources as well as interviews, letters, and papers in the archives of the National Library of Wales. The biographical material is handled carefully and attentively, avoiding simplification. This is a very accomplished example of the genre, opening up a lot of new material and providing a basis for further research and interpretation."--Fiona Robertson, Birmingham City University 'This volume, which provides a new perspective on the life and works of Kate Roberts, is written in a very accessible style. The coverage of Roberts' playwriting and of her non-fictional prose is much more extensive than in previous critical biographies, and the relation between the life and works, is illuminatingly detailed. Throughout, the focus is on Roberts as a woman writer, on her concern with the female perspective and on her own rather isolated position as a major female contributor to Welsh-language writing. Altogether then, the volume fulfils its promise of providing a fresh assessment in English of this important figure in the history of twentieth-century fiction.' Professor Jane Aaron (University of Glamorgan)

About the Author(s)

Author(s): Katie Gramich

Dr Katie Gramich is Professor in English Literature at Cardiff University.

Read more