Caradoc Evans

Evans was brought up in a Welsh-speaking community in Rhydlewis, Cardiganshire, and although he learned English at school and always wrote in English his work is influenced by Welsh syntax and vocabulary in a similar way to the way Lewis Grassic Gibbon's work in Scotland (written in roughly the same period) was influenced by Scots.

[1] His first (and possibly most important) work of fiction was a series of short stories called My People, published by Andrew Melrose in 1915.

Evans wished to shock the Welsh out of their complacency and smugness by contrasting the pieties of non-conformist Christianity with the brutal realities of poverty, meanness and hypocrisy he had personally experienced.

[4] Caradoc met (1929) and later married (1933) the Countess Helene Marguerite Barcynska, who wrote romantic novels under the name Oliver Sandys.

The house they lived in, "Brynawelon" had spectacular views of Plynlimon, which may have inspired her book The Miracle Stone of Wales (1957).