[1][3] In 1950 Rhys borrowed money from friends of hers to begin a bookshop specialising in books published in the Welsh language and university textbooks at the Castle Arcade shopping building in Cardiff.
[1][3] During that era, books published in the Welsh language were scarce with a close following and the opening of her shop expanded their reach further south in Wales.
[3] Rhys had regular customers in Idris Foster, the professor of Celtic Studies at Jesus College, Oxford, the poets Waldo Williams and Dylan Thomas, Saunders Lewis, the co-founder of the political party Plaid Cymru,[1] the historian John Davies,[3] the politician Neil Kinnock and his wife Glenys Parry.
A doctor from Kuwait held a positive review of her swift service, and he persuaded his hospital in his home country to order all of its works from her store.
[1][2] Rhys traveled to China via a cargo boat, the Trans-Siberian Railway to reach Russia, a bus to India, visited the Americas by the Greyhound Lines,[1] and all of Africa.