Rape of the Fair Country

Infobox Book
name = Rape of the Fair Country
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author = Alexander Cordell
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country = United Kingdom
language = English
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genre = Novel
publisher = Victor Gollancz
pub_date = Jan 1959
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media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
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isbn = NA
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preceded_by =
followed_by = The Hosts Of Rebecca

"Rape of the Fair Country" is a novel by Alexander Cordell, first published in 1959. It is the first in Cordell's "Mortymer Trilogy", followed by The Hosts Of Rebecca (1960) and Song of the Earth (1969). [Stephens, Meic (1986). The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales. OUP.] The book has been translated into seventeen languages.

Cordell's style and subject matter are reminiscent of Richard Llewellyn's "How Green Was My Valley".

Plot summary

The plot concerns the Welsh iron making communities of Blaenavon and Nantyglo in the 19th century. The action is seen through the eyes of young Iestyn Mortymer who grows up in times of growing tensions between ironmasters and Trade Unionists. In 1826, when the book starts, Iestyn is eight and already beginning work at the Garndyrus furnaces near Blaenavon. His sister Morfydd has strong feelings about women and children working in mines and ironworks. She sympathises with the Chartist movement and condems the action of the Scotch Cattle. In this she is in opposition to Hywel Mortymer, their conservative father who later begins to question his own loyalty to the ironmaster.

Criticism

Cordell's first successful novel draws a sometimes romanticized picture of life in early industrial Wales. His topics are the fight for trade unions and the Chartist movement. The historical background against which the novel is set is described in considerable detail with profoundly researched events like the 1839 Newport Insurrection.

Bibliography