‘These are partly macabre, partly puzzling... They
need rereading and decoding, since all that is simple
and obvious in the stories hide the unrecorded
nuances of society’s unhappy cruelty. Dorothy
Edwards was a marvellous, skilled writer.’
– Kate MacDonald
‘I can’t think of a more wonderful collection of
stories... It’s a card-carrying masterpiece. Funny,
creepy, and strangely beautiful.’
– Dan Rhodes
These sharp, ironic and compelling stories are perfect
hard gems of observation about the truths of everyday
life: kindness and friendship balance precariously with
obsession and desire.
Dorothy Edwards was educated at Howell’s School
and Cardiff University, where she studied Greek and
Philosophy. After graduation she pursued a literary
career, travelling in Europe and living briefly in Vienna,
Florence and later in London. She published a collection
of short stories, Rhapsody, in 1927, followed by a novel,
Winter Sonata, in 1928. She returned to Wales to look
after her widowed mother but struggled to sustain her
literary output in relative isolation, writing only a few
more stories. She took her own life in 1934, at the age of
thirty-one. Rhapsody and Other Stories is republished in
the Library of Wales series with three new stories and an
introduction by Christopher Meredith.