Rhys Davies (writer)

Rhys Davies (9 November 1901 – 21 August 1978) (born Vivian Rees Davies) was a Welsh novelist and short story writer, who wrote in the English language.

One of the most prolific Welsh prose writers of the 20th century, Davies wrote approximately one hundred short stories, as well as twenty novels, three novellas, two books about Wales and an autobiography. Though he lived largely in London, Davies' work is often set in Wales, typically either in a fictionalised Rhondda or further west in his rural stories.

Davies was born on 9 November 1901 in Blaenclydach, a side-valley of the Rhondda. His father was a grocer and his mother a schoolteacher. His parents spoke Welsh, but did not pass it on to Rhys or his siblings. Rhys Davies's younger brother, Lewis Davies, was a Welsh librarian and philanthropist. As a child he attended Gosen Chapel, and later switched to St Thomas's Church, but ultimately declared himself an atheist in later life. He attended Porth County School, but left at fourteen and worked for his parents' shop. He briefly worked in Cardiff at a corn-merchant's warehouse before moving to London, where he began his literary career with the publication of a number of short stories. The publisher Charles Lahr published some of Davies' early work in The New Coterie, a small avant-garde magazine. In 1927 Davies published his first short story collection The Song of Songs and first novel The Withered Root. The Withered Root had a favourable critical reception, receiving good reviews and published in an American edition. He received an advance for his second novel that helped him remain a full-time writer.

It was at this time (1928–29) that Davies was invited to stay with D. H. Lawrence and Frieda Lawrence in France. Their meeting has been dramatised in Sex and Power at the Beau Rivage (2003), a play by contemporary Welsh author Richard Lewis Davies. Rhys Davies smuggled a manuscript copy of Lawrence's Pansies into Britain and arranged for it to be published by Charles Lahr. Though Lawrence's death in March 1930 made their friendship a brief one, Lawrence appears to have been an important influence on Davies' work. Davies was homosexual, though he never wrote publicly about his own sexuality.

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