Keidrych Rhys : The Van Pool and Other Writings

Keidrych Rhys (1915-87) was one of Wales''s most influential writers in the 1940s and 50s: the result of his own poetry, his editorship of Wales magazine and his notorious attacks on the Bloomsbury Set. His circle of literary friends included Dylan Thomas, Glyn Jones, Vernon Watkins, Emyr Humphreys, Alun Lewis and R.S. Thomas; he was married, sometimes tempestuously, to the poet Lynette Roberts.

This book brings together Rhys''s only poetry collection, The Van Pool (Faber, 1942), and a variety of unpublished poems. To this Mundye adds selected prose writings, including the Forewords to Rhys'' influential Faber anthologies Poems from the Forces (1941) and Modern Welsh Poetry (1944), plus editorials from Wales and other articles, and radio scripts. A comprehensive Introduction provides biographical and critical context to a writer whose taste for controversy (and alcohol) ultimately undermined his poetic career.

"One of the most remarkable figures in the Welsh literary world before and after the Second World War."
Patrick Hannan, BBC

Charles Mundye is a Lecturer in English at the University of Hull. He has published a book on Ezra Pound, and edited the work of Laura Riding and Robert Graves in A Survey of Modernist Poetry (Carcanet, 2002).