Poetry
Alun Lewis: Letters to my Wife
Gweno LewisAlun Lewis (1915-1944) was one of the few great British writers of the Second World War. His early death at the age of twenty-eight robbed Wales of its most promising poet and story writer.
Born and brought up near Aberdare in South Wales, the son of a teacher, he read history at Aberystwyth and Manchester. Early in 1940, after a brief period teaching, he enlisted in the Royal Engineers. Becoming a soldier had a stimulating effect on Lewis’s writing: his first book of poems, Raiders’ Dawn, was published in 1942, and a collection of short stories, The Last Inspection, appeared in the same year. All this work is characterised by vivid realism and emotional power. Later that year Lewis’s new regiment, the South Wales Borderers, travelled to the war in India. His experiences in the East are recreated in the beautiful poems of Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets and the stories and letters of In the Green Tree.
Although a soldier and poet, Lewis wrote regularly to his family, friends and other writers such as Robert Graves. Mostly these letters are uncollected. Those that have been published received high praise, and were compared to Keats’s letters by Walter Allen. Letters to My Wife includes over 240 letters to his wife Gweno Ellis, beginning with his enlistment and continuing until his death in Burma in 1944. From them emerges a unique account of day to day army life, with descriptions of the journey to India via Brazil and South Africa. Above all, Lewis’s letters testify to his love for his war bride Gweno, whom he married in July 1941 before embarkation. Letters to My Wife is the story of Alun Lewis’s war.
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ISBN : 1854110047 Pages : 430gwales.com : Alun Lewis: Letters to my Wife
amazon.co.uk : Alun Lewis: Letters to my Wife
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