SOURCE: “The Satire of Caradoc Evans,” in The Anglo-Welsh Review, Vol. 72, 1982, pp. 58–65.

In the following essay, Jones discusses the pastoral qualities of Evans's satire.

“Satyr is a sort of Glass,” writes Swift, “wherein Beholders do generally discover everybody's Face but their Own; which is the chief Reason for that kind Reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it”.¹ Swift might have been amazed at the reception of Caradoc Evans' work. Perhaps no event has made the Welsh public react so like the savage caricatures of them portrayed in My People as the publication of that volume of short stories in 1915. Contemporary reviews, articles and letters express disgust and outrage. And neither was the abuse any less upon the publication, the following year, of Capel Sion. “They called in the police when he wrote My People,” wrote a reviewer in the Sketch...