Biography
Dorothy Edwards was born in 1903 in Ogmore Vale, a small mining community in Mid Glamorgan. Her father, an ardent socialist and Independent Labour Party leader, was the local school headmaster. After a scholarship to Howell’s School for Girls, Llandaf, she took a degree at Cardiff University in Greek and Philosophy, but literature was her passion and soon after graduating her short stories began to appear in magazines and journals. These were collected in Rhapsody (1927), along with several previously unpublished stories written during the nine months Edwards spent in Vienna and Florence. Her novel Winter Sonata (1928) followed shortly afterwards. She spent the following years trying to supplement her mother’s meagre pension by writing stories and articles for magazines and newspapers, and doing some extra-mural teaching at Cardiff University, but she never undertook full-time employment. After a brief period spent living in London with acquaintances from the Bloomsbury circle, Edwards committed suicide on a Cardiff railway line in 1934. A note left in her pocket at the time of her death read: “I am killing myself because I have never sincerely loved any human being all my life. I have accepted kindness and friendship and even love without gratitude, and given nothing in return.”
