The Great Deed of Gwilym Bevan (T. Gwynn Jones)

“No, they'll kill me too. Shh, here they come, they're breaking down the door. Oh, have mercy, have mercy, save me!"
"So you're scared of dying? Flee then, run for your life!"

After being rescued from a suicide attempt in London, Gwilym Bevan returns home to Wales and finds work in the local quarry. His wit and charisma mean he soon finds himself elected a leader among his fellow workers, but the spectre of unrest is already on the horizon...

The hard-hitting political novel Gorchest Gwilym Bevan by T. Gwynn Jones was one of the first Welsh novels in either language to portray industrial unrest, and was a bolt from the blue when first published in Welsh in 1899. This English translation by Adam Pearce, the first ever of this novel and the first of any novel by Jones in well over a century, is a unique opportunity to sample the prose of one of the great Welsh thinkers and artists of his day.

"A novel with a social and political message... a socialist novel that speaks out for workers' rights...
The early novels of T. Gwynn Jones's were a milestone in the growth and development of the novel in Welsh.”
—Alan Llwyd

Note: This is the English translation of the novel. For the original Welsh version, also available from Melin Bapur, see Gorchest Gwilym Bevan.

Paperback, 198 pp.