Gwyn Jones (author)

Gwyn Jones (1907, New Tredegar, Monmouthshire — 1999) was a Welsh novelist and story writer, and a scholar and translator of Nordic literature and history. His translations include "Four Icelandic Sagas" (1935), "The Vatndalers' Saga" (1944), "The Mabinogion" (1948), "Egil's Saga" (1960), "Eirik the Red and Other Icelandic Sagas" (1961) and "The Norse Atlantic Saga" (1964). He also wrote "A History of the Vikings" (1968) and "Kings, Beasts and Heroes" (1972). In honor of his scholarship, Jones received the Commander's Cross of the Order of the Falcon from the President of Iceland in 1963.citation |author=Meic Stephens |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19991210/ai_n14276658 |title=Obituary: Professor Gwyn Jones| periodical=The Independent |date=Dec 10,1999]

In addition to his translations, he was an important author in the Anglo-Welsh tradition. His novels and story collections include "Richard Savage" (1935), "Times Like These" (1936), "The Nine Days' Wonder" (1937) and "Garland of Hays" (1938), "The Buttercup Field" (1945), "The Flowers beneath the Scythe" (1952), "Shepherd's Hey" (1953) and "The Walk Home" (1962).

Jones also founded "The Welsh Review" in 1939, which he edited until 1948; this journal was important for raising discussion of Welsh issues and for attracting submissions from such authors as T. S. Eliot and J. R. R. Tolkien. He continued to support Welsh literature by chairing both the Welsh Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain and the first editorial board of "The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales". He also published three sets of lectures on Anglo-Welsh literature: "The First Forty Years" (1957), "Being and Belonging" (1977), and "Babel and the Dragon's Tongue" (1981).

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External links

* [http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~ellisjs/Brown.PDF The Ex-Centric Voice: The English-Language Short Story in Wales] by Tony Brown