My People

by Caradoc Evans, John Harris (Foreword)

The appearance of My People in 1915 caused a literary sensation. In England critics praised it as a work of art comparable with Zola and new writers such as Joyce.

Genres: Classics, Short Stories, History

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1915

About the author

David Caradoc Evans was a Welsh novelist, short-story writer, and playwright who wrote in English. He was married to writer Oliver Sandys.

Reviews

[hawk · Rating 5 out of 5]

the edition I accessed has a good introduction (by John Harris), but I got abit restless two thirds of the way thru it, and wanted to get on to the stories! 🙂

I came back to it after, and found the publishing history of the collection, and it's reception (in Wales and England), as interesting as some of the earlier commentary on some of the social issues the stories speak of.

I very much enjoyed the stories themselves. they felt dark, full, very tangible... like the colour, texture and richness (and at times barrenness) of the soil farmed, felt between fingers... and the dark depths of the solid interiors of the capel, and of the villagers black Sunday best, buttoned up.

🖤

accessed as an RNIB audiobook, well read by Sean Probert 🙂

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caradoc Evans' collection of short stories, My People, is rather hard to like. It focuses on the common Welsh people, fiercely satirising them and the Nonconformist church, in the time he was writing -- around 1915. He's rather brutal, honestly: the people he describes are simple, even stupid, and ignorance and what they considered to be sin, and hypocrisy, abound. He makes them sound stupider by the way he chooses to represent the language: instead of simply writing what they'd say in idiomatic English, he translates it literally.

It's very discomforting reading, but interesting, and one has to be wary of taking it at face value. Still, I can understand why Welsh people detested it -- and I shudder to imagine why English people at the time of publication loved it so much. "Yay, another piece of evidence that the Welsh are immoral, ignorant scum."

It is surprisingly easy to read, though, despite the very odd syntax and the discomforting subject matter. The edition I read also comes with a helpful introduction.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I am a man of God,” Pedr drivelled. “Hearken you now to my voice...’The children of Capel Sion,’ said the little white Jesus, ‘are walking in the ways of the Bad Man.’”

“Pedr bach,” said Sadrach the Large, “have you care now. Don’t you, little male, trifle with the name of the Big Man.”

Bitter little stories of greed, grime, incest, and murder from West Wales under the yoke of the Chapel and its deacons.

The language is wonderful, marrying Caradoc Evans’ curious interpretation of Welsh idiom with Old Testament English. Some of the stories read like wayward parables in which nothing very good happens.

I am conscious that my great-grandfather was minister of Capel Seion in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, among other places, in the days when the chapel was everything. He was still alive when My People was published and I daresay he would not have been a great fan of the book. It still has the power to shock.

But I liked it. The hypocrisy, covetousness, and curious customs of the benighted residents of Manteg seem to me to be in equal parts bleak, desperate, and blackly humorous.

“Boy bach foolish!” cried Katto. “What nonsense you talk out of the back of your head! Sober serious, mouth not that you have thrown gravel at Sara Jane’s window! She’s not worth her broth.”

[Anthony Batterton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is a devastating, vicious portrayal of life in West Wales just over a century ago. Evans shatters the myth of a pious, chapel-going society, exposing the hypocrisy of secular and religious leaders alike, and focusing on the victims (often, but not always, women) of a narrow, unevenly-enforced set of social mores. My favourites were "The Talent Thou Gavest" and "The Woman who Sowed Iniquity".

[Cheery Littlebottom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories pertaining to daily life are ok, but the ones with spiritual undertones are exquisite. Would be five stars, but everyone in here seems to fucking hate women, including the author and literally God

[Sonja Kgr · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit bizarre and abstract but all in aml interesting

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting early 20th century "realist" short stories that appeared about the same time as Dubliners. Unlike Joyce, who co-opts the King's Speech to usurp his authority, Evans adopts the strange patois of his native Welshmen in his effort to condemn them as the backwards, hypocritical, cruel, stupid, benighted range-maggots that he sees them as. As a modernist Welsh writer, Evans is about as opposite from Dylan Thomas as you could be. His writing is bare, his landscapes are bare, his people are bare -- mottled and cratered here and there with strange topography. This is no Fern Hill. Instead, it is closer to Beckett, though not written nearly so well. With departures from its "realist" core into moments of the supernatural, Evans sometimes channels Goya, though his imagination is lesser and his style less adept. Mostly interesting as a comparison to Dubliners, but very interesting in its own right.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m reading a few bits of Welsh literature at the minute and this is one of the more well-known ones. It’s essentially a collection of short stories all set in one village, so many of the characters pop in and out of each other’s stories. The tone of all of them is very religious and judgemental of one another - I read that this book was Caradoc Evans sending up ‘his people’ and the notion of the Welsh as God’s chosen people, in essence, and there’s definitely a strong feeling of Evans taking the piss.
Obviously I will pass no comment as I love Wales and the Welsh! But I liked the Under Milk Wood-esque-ness of the village as the centre and the reoccurring characters (My People came first though). The actual stories/the content didn’t do that much for me, I didn’t enjoy the book especially. However I was reading this more for research and background knowledge of Welsh literature more than for enjoyment so that’s no the end of the world.

[Richard Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd never heard of Caradoc Evans until recommended to read him by a Welsh friend I met walking the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. I've much enjoyed these stories and think it a shame that Evans seems to have been largely forgotten when he was ranked alongside Joyce and Zola when he published these stories. He has a unique voice, but he must have been an inspiration to Dylan Thomas: you can see some of the roots of Under Milkwood in these stories.

Discovering Evans is part of a process for me of discovering (or rediscovering) Wales. I tried to catch some of what was happening in my blog below, which includes a longish quote from Evans that will give you a god flavour of his writing.

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/...

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the easiest or, frankly, most enjoyable collection of stories, but Evans undeniably leaves an impression that I thought was pretty intense and thought provoking. The stories are all dark, some intensely violent, some darkly comic, and almost all are scathingly satirical. Evans also captures images and moments which are so Welsh, forming a landscape that feels personal. To me, this makes his criticisms and satire all the more pointed. The context of the publication and controversy of the book is also extremely intersting and, I think, vital to understanding what Evans was trying to do.

[Holly]

Weird and disturbing and so so so clever.

Read for MA Fourth Year: Welsh Writing in English module

[Meilyr Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

the old wench does not speak welsh!

[Billy Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Evans's collection of short stories is nothing short of genius. The fusion of literary English and Welsh colloquialism, Old Testament cadence and reprehensible protagonists is something to behold. In this collection, Evans attempted to expose the frivolousness of religious moralism in Welsh nonconformist life. A rural, impoverished Wales is the setting, in the grips of a theocracy that exercises overwhelming influence on quiescent communities. This incendiary collection caused real resentment among many Welsh people and something of a furore in at least five Welsh, normally genial, newspapers. An attempt was even made to ban it.

Evans's influence in Welsh literature in English is far-reaching, influencing writers such as Glyn Jones and Dylan Thomas, who visited Evans personally in 1934, to more contemporary writers such as Niall Griffiths. Certainly, Evans's gothicization of Welsh chapel culture is apparent in the earlier, more surreal, short stories of Dylan Thomas.

In 'A Father in Sion', deacon of repute Sadrach Danyrefail imprisons (in Rochester/Bertha Mason fashion) his wife Achsah in a hayloft, decries her as mad and promptly replaces her with a mistress. Sadly, and unlike Bertha Mason, there is no retribution via conflagration. In 'Lamentations', Matilda has incest visited upon her by her brother, Evan Rhiw. Evan is exculpated by the local minister because God, in the minister's words, has deemed Evan to possess a 'clean heart'. The horrors go on.

My People truly is a work of stunning originality, containing tales of woe, decay, death, gothic-grotesqueries and other extremes of the human experience. Would recommend for fellow ghouls.

[Carlton King · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read My People years ago in college, and it was a profound influence on me. As a placeholder . . . Evans will show you how to write about where you come from with both love and the disdain that can only come with love.

[Camille K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edgy, compelling stories. Uncannily familiar. Mencken was right -- this does describe Southern fundamentalism. How I wish he were wrong!

[Julia Kocoń · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5