Caradoc Evans

Description

Short story writer, playwright, journalist and novelist Caradoc Evans (1878 -1945) was born at Pantycroi, Llanfihangel-ar-arth and moved to Lanlas Uchaf, Rhydlewis, during his childhood. In 1893 he was apprenticed to a draper in Carmarthen and thereafter he worked as a shop assistant in Barry, Cardiff and London. Whilst in London he attended evening classes in English composition, published some short stories under the name D. Evans-Emmott and, so encouraged, found employment as a journalist in 1906. He became editor of the magazine Ideas in 1915 and was acting editor of Cassell's Weekly and T.P.'s Weekly from 1923 to 1929. His first collection of short stories, My People (1915), brought him immediate notoriety. Two further volumes and a play followed quickly, and these were succeded by four novels, a further volume of short stories, a highly formalized short novel and a last gathering of short stories. He married romantic novelist Marguerite Hélène in 1933, his first wife having divorced him in the previous year, and together were involved in theatrical ventures, both in Wales and England. After the outbreak of war in 1939 they went to live in Aberystwyth and eventually settled at New Cross, where Evans lies buried in the graveyard of Horeb Chapel. Information taken from Meic Stephens' New Companion to the Literature of Wales (University of Wales Press, 1998)

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