Contents of the English-language version, The Plum Tree and Other Short Prose (2004): When Jones submitted his Welsh-language short stories to Gwasg Gee, a small Denbigh publishing house run by Kate Roberts and Morris Williams, they at first rejected them, but later reconsidered their decision and published them under the title Y Goeden Eirin in 1946.
"Y Briodas", translated into English by Islwyn Ffowc Elis as "The Wedding", was included in Elis's and Gwyn Jones's Twenty-Five Welsh Short Stories (OUP, 1971), later reissued as Classic Welsh Short Stories (OUP, 1992).
[3] There is also an English translation by Meic Stephens of the complete Y Goeden Eirin together with extra material, including previously uncollected stories, an autobiographical sketch by Jones, the transcript of an interview in which Jones discussed the art of short-story writing, and a biographical and critical afterword by Gwyn Thomas.
Jones was a self-consciously intellectual writer,[5] and these stories display the influence of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Saroyan.
[2] Y Goeden Eiren is concerned on the one hand with cerebral ideas[5] and on the other with sexual anxieties, including repressed homosexuality.