Margiad Evans Libros

Written as a series of nature journals, Margiad Evans' Autobiography (1943), is an extraordinary experiment in what she called 'earth writing'. It explores in delicate and precise detail the writer's intensely-felt, even mystical relationship with the natural world. From 1941, she lived in a farmworker's cottage, Potacre, on the summit of a hill above Llangarron and in sight of the Welsh mountains. A meditation on the difficulty of translating the reality of the 'now' into words, Autobiography traces a spiritual journey towards understanding the profound connection between all living things.

The Nightingale Silenced, transcribed by her nephew Jim Pratt from three previously unpublished manuscripts, offers a unique account of the last years of Margiad Evans' life, which was irreversibly changed by the onset of epilepsy at the age of 41. The first part, Journal in Ireland (1949) tells of a joyous and inspirational holiday, free from epilepsy. The second, Letters to Bryher (1949-1958) is a selection from letters to Evans’ friend and benefactor Winifred Ellerman (the English author Bryher). They contain a vivid account of her pregnancy, the birth of her daughter, her frustration at the impact of her illness on her writing, and finally resignation at the terminal nature of her condition. The third part, The Nightingale Silenced (1954), is an evocative and harrowing memoir describing her experiences as an inpatient after her condition became acute. The book closes with five of her poems, written during her final months in hospital, which she intended to publish with The Nightingale Silenced. She died at only 49 in 1958.This new compilation from a courageous young novelist and poet of great promise, silenced too soon, is an enlightening example of writing on the experience of terminal illness.

Margiad Evans (1909 - 1958), essayist, memoirist, novelist and poet, was born in Uxbridge but got her inspiration from the Herefordshire Welsh Border country. First published in 1932 her writing career was curtailed in 1950 when a previously asymptomatic brain tumour induced an epileptic response whose effects became increasingly intrusive and serious over the last eight years of her life. She died at the age of 49. A Ray of Darkness, a unique account of her epilepsy, was first published in 1952 when it was hailed as a significant contribution to the clinical study of epilepsy by eminent neurologists. Its reprint now by Honno follows the publication, last year, of her final autobiographical work The Nightingale Silenced. It remains one of very few accounts of epilepsy written by a sufferer of this serious (but surprisingly common) disease.