From the Valley I Came

by Wil Jon Edwards

Angus and Robertson, 1957 [First Edition], green colour dipped top fore-edge, hardcover, Mylar protected dust-jacket

Very Good Condition, a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, previous owners inscription on front end-paper and in pencil on back end-paper; price-clipped Mylar protected dust-jacket with a little edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing, bumping, small chips and tears to edges and corners (see photographs)

"She was born a Ann Edwards Y Glwyd, Ann Edwards the Gate: because there had been a toll gate near the front door of her house.  She died in 1903 in her late fifties; and her death, as her life, had hardly more importance beyond the mountains that enclosed the valley than one of the tired leaves that fell to the ground in autumn.  Now, however, Ann Edwards will live again and endear herself throughout the world as Mam, the mother of Wil Jon Edwards.
Although completely devoted to his old mother, it is unlikely that Wil Jon Edwards looked on her as more than incidental in his story: after all, she died when he was thirteen, rather more than a year after he had begun work in the pit as a collier's boy.  The years that followed were packed with interest - educating himself, exploring the wide and exciting world discovered in books, winning a scholarship and going to Ruskin College, becoming a friend of Keir Hardie and other labour leaders, conducting economics classes amongst the young miners, being elected a County Councillor and rising to leadership in that industrial struggle which began in the Welsh minefields in the first years of this century."