Morlais

by Alun Lewis

Morlais is Alun Lewis’s unpublished novel from the late 1930s. The Laurentian story of a young boy growing up in the poverty stricken industrial valleys of south Wales, it also reflects Lewis’s own experiences, particularly his search for self-knowledge and his conviction that he would be a writer.

Miner’s son Morlais Jenkins is already being educated away from his background at grammar school when he is adopted, on the death of her own son, by the wife of the local local colliery owner. Morlais’s parents recognize the opportunity for their son to make a better future, but they must all pay a great price. Stifled by middle class life, his adoptive mother recognizes that Morlais will be a poet and encourages him to be neither working class or middle class, but true to his talent.

Full of vivid descriptive passages of life in the fictional mining valley, and centred on the conflicted character of Morlais and the decisions he faces over his two families, his two social backgrounds, and his desire to be a poet, the novel is an enthralling journey through the life of a young boy becoming a young man.

Alun Lewis (1915-1944) was the outstanding writer of World War Two and Morlais, written in his mid twenties, is an early indication of the talented writer he would become just five years later. This edition is accompanied by an Afterword by Lewis’s biographer, John Pikoulis.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2015

About the author

Alun Lewis (1915-1944) was born in Cwmaman. When he was 11, he won a scholarship to Cowbridge Grammar School, and it was here that he began to write well-crafted, thought-provoking fiction. A bright and sensitive boy, his talent for writing was evident from a young age and didn’t go unnoticed by his teachers; he had several stories, including ‘The Tale of the Dwarf’ and ‘The End of the Hunt’, published in his school magazine, The Bovian.

At 17 he won another scholarship to study History at Aberystwyth University, achieving first class honours, and in 1935 he moved to Manchester to study for his MA with the intention of becoming a teacher. When his training was complete he taught at Lewis Boys’ School in Pengam.

A pacifist by nature, Lewis appeared to have no intention of joining the army when the Second World War cast its shadow over Britain, but he eventually joined the Royal Engineers and later qualified as a Second Lieutenant despite how unhappy military life made him. He was stationed with the South Wales Borderers until December 1942, where he arrived at a new station in Nira, India. In the same year his poetry collection Raiders’ Dawn was published. It would be the only collection published during his lifetime.

Just over a year later, in February 1944, Lewis was moved to Burma. There he and his men fought the Japanese on the front line, despite Lewis’s rank meaning he could have remained at headquarters. Though he missed his wife, his family and his home, and struggled with severe depression, he was determined to fight for what he believed was right.

A month later, on the 5th March, 1944, Lewis was found shot in the head after shaving and washing, and died from the wound six hours later. He was 28 years old. Though it is widely believed to have been a tragic accident, there are others who believe Lewis’s death was a suicide. One thing we can be certain of is that his premature death was a great loss to Welsh, and indeed British, literature.

In 2015, Lewis's centenary year, Seren reprinted his Collected Poems, Collected Stories and Letters to My Wife, and also published his previously lost novel, Morlais.