Literary significance & criticism
Although the novel is often considered to be a hymn to working class South Wales, [1] many readers consider parts of it to be an excoriating commentary on the static nature of life in the Valleys. Readers who, like Matthew, have migrated out of Wales frequently sympathise with his inability to escape the entrenched opinions and historical perceptions held by the villagers who remember his childhood and adolescence. Reinforcing the importance of borders to the novel, Matthew comes to notice a stark dividing line between his identity in Wales, where the locals continue to view him as his father's son, and that in England, where he enjoys his own successful academic career. [2]
It is not a novel of dramatic events, but rather one which offers an evocative sense of character and place. Matthew Price's life has many parallels with Raymond Williams's own life and background. The Hogarth Press edition of 1988 catches the spirit of it with a front cover showing the signalman and his son, with the signalman's face recognisably that of Raymond Williams as he then was.
The novel features heavy usage of the distinctive South Wales dialect.
How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, narrated by Huw Morgan, the main character, about his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The author had claimed that he based the book on his own personal experiences but this was found to be untrue after his death; Llewellyn was English-born and spent little time in Wales, though he was of Welsh descent. Llewellyn gathered material for the novel from conversations with local mining families in Gilfach Goch.
Anglo-Welsh literature and Welsh writing in English are terms used to describe works written in the English language by Welsh writers. It has been recognised as a distinctive entity only since the 20th century. The need for a separate identity for this kind of writing arose because of the parallel development of modern Welsh-language literature; as such it is perhaps the youngest branch of English-language literature in the British Isles.
Raymond Henry Williams was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contributed to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Some 750,000 copies of his books were sold in UK editions alone, and there are many translations available. His work laid foundations for the field of cultural studies and cultural materialism.
Moonraker is the third novel by the British author Ian Fleming to feature his fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond. It was published by Jonathan Cape on 5 April 1955 and featured a cover design conceived by Fleming. The plot is derived from a Fleming screenplay that was too short for a full novel, so he added the passage of the bridge game between Bond and the industrialist Hugo Drax. In the latter half of the novel, Bond is seconded to Drax's staff as the businessman builds the Moonraker, a prototype missile designed to defend England. Unknown to Bond, Drax is German, an ex-Nazi now working for the Soviets; his plan is to build the rocket, arm it with a nuclear warhead, and fire it at London. Uniquely for a Bond novel, Moonraker is set entirely in Britain, which raised comments from some readers, complaining about the lack of exotic locations.
Archibald Joseph Cronin, known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel is The Citadel (1937) which tells of a Scottish doctor in a Welsh mining village, who then shoots up the medical ladder in London. Cronin knew both venues, as a medical inspector of mines and as a doctor in Harley Street. The book describes some medical ethics that helped to inspire the National Health Service. Another popular mining novel of his, set in the North East of England, is The Stars Look Down. Both have been filmed, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His 1935 novella Country Doctor inspired a long-running BBC radio and TV series, Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962–1971), set in the 1920s. There was a follow-up series in 1993–1996.
Ammanford is a town and community in Carmarthenshire, Wales, with a population of 5,411 at the 2011 census. It is a former coal mining town. The built-up area had a population of 7,945 with the wider urban area even bigger.
On the Black Hill is a novel by Bruce Chatwin published in 1982 and winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for that year. In 1987 it was made into a film, directed by Andrew Grieve.
Alexander Cordell was the pen name of George Alexander Graber. He was a prolific Welsh novelist and author of 30 acclaimed works which include, Rape of the Fair Country, Hosts of Rebecca and Song of the Earth.
William Larry Brown was an American novelist, non-fiction and short story writer. He won numerous awards including the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction, the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, and Mississippi's Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts. He was also the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction.
Matthew 1:1 is the opening verse in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Since Matthew is traditionally placed as the first of the four Gospels, this verse commonly serves as the opening to the entire New Testament.
The Country and the City is a book of cultural analysis by Raymond Williams which was first published in 1973.
The Fight for Manod (ISBN 0701208090) is a 1979 novel by Raymond Williams.
"The Signal-Man" is a first-person horror/mystery story by Charles Dickens, first published as part of the Mugby Junction collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round.
The existence of a slate industry in Wales is attested since the Roman period, when slate was used to roof the fort at Segontium, now Caernarfon. The slate industry grew slowly until the early 18th century, then expanded rapidly until the late 19th century, at which time the most important slate producing areas were in northwest Wales, including the Penrhyn Quarry near Bethesda, the Dinorwic Quarry near Llanberis, the Nantlle Valley quarries, and Blaenau Ffestiniog, where the slate was mined rather than quarried. Penrhyn and Dinorwig were the two largest slate quarries in the world, and the Oakeley mine at Blaenau Ffestiniog was the largest slate mine in the world. Slate is mainly used for roofing, but is also produced as thicker slab for a variety of uses including flooring, worktops and headstones.
A signalman or signaller is an employee of a railway transport network who operates the points and signals from a signal box in order to control the movement of trains.
Pandy is a hamlet in Monmouthshire, south east Wales, United Kingdom.
A Darker Domain is a 2008 psychological thriller novel by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid. Reviewers often noted the fast paced style of the novel as it flashes back and forth between two plot lines, a contemporary crime in 2007 and the investigation of a cold case from 1984. The novel is set during the UK miners strike of 1984–1985 in Fife. Her accounts of the strike are particularly pointed, exploring the effects of the strikes on the emotions of the people involved and their community. McDermid was raised in Fife, and one reviewer credits her accurate review of the strikes to her experiences earlier in her life. The reviews of the book were generally good, many of the reviewers comparing the book to her previous novels. The New York Times named the book one of the "Notable Crime Books of 2009."
Cormoran Strike is a series of crime fiction novels written by British author J. K. Rowling, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The story chronicles the cases of private detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott. Five novels in the series have so far been published. Rowling stated after the third book that she has plans for at least another ten. The sixth novel, tentatively titled The Ink Black Heart, is scheduled to be released in 2022.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North is the sixth novel by Richard Flanagan, and was the 2014 winner of the Man Booker Prize.
Grafton Melville Richards (1910-1973) was a Welsh scholar in the field of Welsh language and literature and Celtic studies.
