Kate Roberts stands as a towering figure in 20th-century Welsh literature, renowned for her evocative short stories and novels. Her narratives delve into the lives of humble people in the stark landscape of North Wales, portraying their quiet struggles against poverty, disillusionment, and societal constraints. Roberts masterfully explores themes of women's roles and progressive views on life and love, all rendered in rich, perceptive prose. Her work offers a profound glimpse into the resilience of the human spirit in the face of hardship.
In the pages of this classic 1936 novel, we see the passionate and headstrong Jane grow up and grow old, struggling to bring up a family of six children on the pittance earned by her slate-quarrying husband, Ifan.
A lyrical, evocative translation by poet Gillian clarke of a classic Welsh novel by Kate Roberts, Tegwch y Bore. -- Gwasg Gomer
The people have spoken. Minnesota wouldn't be Minnesota without Bob Dylan. Or the BWCA. Immigrant farmers. The American Indian Movement. Thousands of citizens nominated their favorite topics for inclusion in Minnesota 150. With short essays, eye-catching illustrations, and text from the winning nominations, Kate Roberts reveals the many ways in which our past becomes our collective history.Read stories from people like former Iron Ranger Brian Weber, who wrote about watching the 1980 Olympic hockey team as a young "It makes me think of our neighbor, a miner with a very Finnish last name, who watched all the games with us. Thinking about it now, after the taconite expansion of the early to mid-1970s, this was the beginning of the end for the mines up there. And I think they knew it. But they felt they had a hockey team and a coach that was fighting for us. And hockey mattered." Learn about the genesis of such iconic businesses as the Greyhound Bus Company, which got its start when Hibbing natives Carl Wickman and Andrew Anderson bought a used Hupmobile, hoping to sell it at a profit.Through surprising, little-known stories, Minnesota 150 explores how such intangibles as personal judgment, political climate, and popular taste can shape our view of the past.
Kate Roberts wrote this novel in 1956, but the background is the immediate post 1939-45 war period. Like all the novelist’s works, it is set in the slate quarrying areas of Arfon where she was born and grew up. Although there is unhappiness, poverty, illness and jealousy here, it is a positive novel with friendship, kindness and love much in evidence.The main character is a woman called Lora Ffennig. This is typical of the author’s work. All her novels deal with women’s trials and tribulations. Lora Ffennig has two children and is an efficient, well-organised wife. Suddenly, without any warning, she learns that her husband has run away with another woman. We follow her plight for the first year, coping with one problem after another.By the end of the year, Lora Ffennig feels that she was asleep before the nightmare of losing her husband, but that she is now fully awake. She has learned that all may not always be as they appear. She now knows who her friends are, but people change, nothing is permanent. She alone can take responsibility for her own and her children’s lives.
Set in the hill-farms and slate quarries of Gwynedd, the story follows the childhood of Begw Gruffydd, a girl navigating friendships, rivalries, and the complexities of adult interactions from ages four to nine. Kate Roberts captures the essence of childhood with vivid detail and authentic dialogue, portraying a world filled with small joys and disappointments. The novel reflects the author's deep roots in Welsh culture and her significant impact on Welsh-language literature, translated by Wynn Griffith.