Glyn Jones

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Morgan Glyndwr Jones, also known as Glyn Jones, (1905-2005), was a Welsh novelist, poet, and literary scholar and an important figure in Anglo-Welsh literature.

He served as both Chairman and President of the Welsh Academy's English-language department.

In his book Two Tongues (1968), the dragon has two Tongues (1968) explores how the interwar period influenced his generation of Welsh authors.

Early life

In 1905, Glyn Jones was born in Merthyr Tydfil, to a Welsh-speaking household. His father was a postal clerk and his mother was a tutor, and he was a teacher. Despite Welsh being his family name, he was educated in English, as were all attending mainstream education in Wales in the first half of the twentieth century. Jones obtained a spot at Cyfarthfa Castle Grammar School, but by the time he left secondary school, he had almost lost his ability to speak Welsh fluently. However, he re-taught himself Welsh in later life, although his literary work was still in English. He earned a spot at St Paul's College in Cheltenham after leaving Cyfarthfa Grammar.

Jones was a devout Christian, and his parents were Welsh Nonconformists from an early age. Jones attended Sunday School as an infant and later lived in Cardiff's Minny Street Congregational Chapel. Even though some of his contemporary writers rejected religion, his religious convictions and his Welshness inspired all of his creative work.

Following his complete education, Jones began teaching in Merthyr, leaving Merthyr to take up a job in Cardiff, where the poverty of his students had greatly surprised him, as well as his political position as a socialist. Jones, who was never a Labour Party member, was sympathetic to Plaid Cymru's aspirations in his later life. He married Phyllis Doreen Jones, to whom all his books were dedicated in 1935. In 1933, his first poetry appeared in The Dublin Journal, and in 1935, he wrote The Blue Bed, a collection of short stories based on his friend Dylan Thomas's suggestion. Some of the stories were located in undefined, almost mystical locations, and others depicting Welsh village life in a comprehensive and memorable way. Reviewers in London gave him a scathing critical review. "I was Born in the Ystrad Valley," one of The Blue Bed's stories, tells of an armed Communist revolt that was born from his own experiences of life in the Cardiff slums. His early writings were heavily inspired by fellow Welsh author Caradoc Evans, but The Blue Bed did not have the same harsh tones of Evans's work as his work.

Jones, a conscient objector, was registered in 1940 as a conscient objector during the Second World War. He was fired from his teaching position by the Cardiff Education Committee, but he soon found a new teaching job in Glamorgan.

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Literary career

Jones continued writing, with a collection of poems being published in 1939. His first literary critique of poetry was of English Romantic poetry, of which he shared a style of striking imagery and sensuous language, being drawn to both D. H. Lawrence and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Jones was particularly impressed by Hopkins, and wrote an essay on the latter's awareness of Welsh poetic metrics. The 1940s saw two more works published, a second collection of poetry, The Dream of Jake Hopkins (1944) and a second book of short stories The Water Music and other stories (1944). As in his earlier work, The Water Music saw his tales set in either the industrial Merthyr of his childhood, or the greener landscape of Carmarthenshire.

The 1950s and 1960s saw Jones concentrate on writing his three novels, The Valley, The City, The Village (1956), The Learning Lark (1960) and The Island of Apples (1965). His first novel, The Valley, The City, The Village, a bildungsroman centred on a young artist, is full of description and character, though it was criticised by some reviewers for its lack of formal unity and overly exotic language. However, some critics, such as Meic Stephens, believe that Jones's use of a variety of narrative and rhetorical techniques make the work a tour-de-force. His second novel, The Learning Lark, is a picaresque send-up of the education system in a corrupt mining village. But despite reflecting ugly-natured teachers bribing their way to headships, there is no biting satire, and the book is full of comic tones, with Jones holding up a mirror to the flaws in human traits. His third novel, The Island of Apples, set in a fictionalised Merthyr, uses the myth of Ynys Afallon to explore the pain of the loss of childhood. It is again told through the eyes of a young narrator.

During the 1960s, Jones was at the centre of a literary controversy, when Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid lifted verbatim lines from one of Jones' short stories and published them as part of his poem Perfect. Although Jones himself remained silent on the issue, supporters of both men filled columns in The Times Literary Supplement, arguing over the merits of the situation. MacDiarmid later stated that he had a photographic memory, and that he must have used Jones's lines unconsciously. In later years neither poet showed much distress when they met, and were able to laugh off the controversy.

The decade also saw Jones publish his most important work, The Dragon has Two Tongues, a criticism of Anglo-Welsh literature; an autobiographical work examining the effect of education, religion and politics on a generation of Welsh writers between the two World Wars, and an important account of his friendship with several important Welsh writers including Caradoc Evans, Dylan Thomas, Gwyn Jones and Keidrych Rhys.

The 1970s saw Jones return to poetry and short stories, with two collections of stories published, Selected Short Stories (1971) and Welsh Heirs (1977). Between them came a poetic compilation, Selected Poems (1975).

In the 1980s, Jones spent increasing time translating Welsh-language works into English. Although Jones was now a fluent Welsh speaker, he never wrote in his mother tongue, once stating that his Welsh was "...the language of adolescence, not the mother tongue, [which] the artist will be likely to use for his creative purposes." Jones first translated Welsh texts in 1954, working with T. J. Morgan on The Saga of Llywarch the Old. In 1981 he worked on his own translations with When the Rose Bush brings forth Apples followed by Honeydew on the Wormwood: a further selection of old Welsh verses in 1984.

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Awards and later life

Jones was seen as an important and influential writer in Welsh literary circles. He was elected President of the Welsh Academy and in 1985 became the Academy's first honorary member. This was proceeded in 1971 by an award from the Arts Council of Wales for his contribution to the literature of Wales. He was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature by the University of Glamorgan in 1994 and an Honorary Fellowship by Trinity College, Carmarthen. In 1988 he became an honorary member of the Gorsedd of Bards.

In his final years, Jones's health suffered. He was forced to have his right arm amputated, but he continued to correspond with fellow writers, in what he saw as a vital link in the history of Welsh literature. He died in Cardiff on 10 April 1995.