Lewis Richard Jones is one of the finest of modern British novelists and one of the most neglected. He wrote two novels, Cwmardy and We Live, both of which are outstanding depictions of life in the mining valleys of South Wales during the early part of the twentieth century. They are distinguished by a powerful directness of sympathy and a solid, old-fashioned strength of description. Their nearest contemporary equivalent would be John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, though they are also reminiscent of the industrial novels of Elizabeth Gaskell.

Jones was born in Blaenclydach in the Clydach vale, a small blind valley off the main Rhondda valley. He was illegitimate; his mother, Jane, was a domestic servant. Raised largely by his grandmother, he went to work as a collier as soon as he left school at the age of twelve. In April 1917, he was married and became the...