Today marks ten years since the centenary of the birth of Dorothy Edwards (18th August 1903 - 6th January 1934), a Welsh writer who was surely an ancestor of Kristin Scott-Thomas (see image above).
The excellent biography by Claire Flay was published in 2011 and I'm reading it now in tandem with Edwards' Rhapsody, a collection of ten short stories, all of them bleak and strange and very fine. She also wrote one novel - Winter Sonata (1928) and I'll read that if I can track down a copy.
She was born in Ogmore Vale in South Wales and attended Cardiff University, where she studied Greek and philosophy and was politically active, working for socialist and Welsh nationalist causes. She spent a short period in London on the fringes of Bloomsbury.
On 6th January 1934 she threw herself in front of a train near Caerphilly railway station. Her suicide note read: "I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return."
She should be better known, so let's start a revival. More on her here.
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