Arthur Geraint Goodwin was a Welsh journalist, novelist and short story writer from near Newtown, Montgomeryshire, who wrote about rural life on the Welsh border. His first novel, published in 1935, was the autobiographical Call Back Yesterday. Goodwin's most acclaimed work, The Heyday in the Blood, appeared in 1936, and his last novel, Come Michaelmas, appeared in 1939. In 1975, The Heyday in the Blood was translated into Welsh.
Biography
He was born in the village of Llanllwchaearn, on the outskirts of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, the son of Richard Goodwin and Mary Jane Goodwin. His father died when he was eight, and his mother married the almost twenty years younger Frank Humphreys when he was twelve. This marriage was his mother's third and Humphreys' second. Goodwin apparently got on well with his stepfather, and Frank Humphreys', and his mother's, love for the outdoors - especially fishing and rough shooting - were an important influence on him. He attended Tywyn County School as a boarder at the age of thirteen, and when he left school, he initially worked on The Montgomeryshire Express. Then in 1923, he moved to London to work in a News Agency and later as a reporter for The Daily Sketch. Goodwin's stepfather had two sons, around Goodwin's age, who had become journalists.. In 1930 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent several months in a sanitorium. Then in October 1932 he married a fellow journalist from Yorkshire, Rhoda Storey. Out of his experience of TB came his first novel, the autobiographical Call Back Yesterday. The success of this novel led to Cape offering him a contract for two further books and Goodwin and his family moved to Hertfordshire and he became a full-time writer. Following Goodwin's Call Back Yesterday in 1936 came his most acclaimed work, The Heyday in the Blood. This novel contrasts the old and declining ways of a village on the Welsh Border with new ways of England, where many migrate, and is a vibrant work of both tragedy and farcical comedy. In 1938 they moved to Corris Uchaf, near Machynlleth, where Goodwin wrote his last novel Come Michaelmas, which is set in a barely disguised Newtown. The same year he became ill again and spent sometime in the sanitarium at Talgarth, on the edge of The Black Mountains. While the family moved to Montgomery, Montgomeryshire, Geraint Goodwin's health continued to deteriorate and he died aged 38 from tuberculosis in Montgomery, survived by his wife and a son and a daughter.
Reputation
As Kate Gramich comments, although he left only "a handful of novels and short stories" these are works which "are still extraordinarily fresh and vigorous". In 1975 The Heyday in the Blood was translated into Welsh.
Works
Conversations with George Moore London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1929: Knopf: New York, 1930; London: Jonathan Cape, 1937.
A first sheaf. London: London School of Print, c.1930.
Call Back Yesterday London, Jonathan Cape, 1935.
The Heyday in the Blood 1936; London: Penguin,1954; Parthian Books, 2008.
The White Farm and Other Stories London: Jonathan Cape, . Bath: Cedric Chivers,1969 .
Watch for the Morning London: Jonathan Cape, 1938; Bath: Cedric Chivers, 1969 .
Come Michaelmas 1939. Bath: Chivers, 1969 .
The Collected Short Stories of Geraint Goodwin, ed. Sam Adams and Roland Mathias, Tenby, Wales: H.G. Walters, 1976.
My People. Short Stories Bridgend: Seren, 1987).
Shearing and Other Stories, ed. Meic Stephens. Llanrwst : Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2004.
Short stories and articles
“Mary Webb.” The Everyman, 2 May 1929, pp. 14–15.
"The Flying Hours Are Gone" Lovat Dickson’s Magazine February 1935.
Adams, Sam. "Geraint Goodwin: A Montgomeryshire Writer and his Characters". Planet, 30–4. 1975.
Goodwin, Rhoda. "The Geraint Goodwin – Edward Garnett Letters". Anglo-Welsh Review, 22.49 : 10,23, 119–49.
Helgasson, M. B., "Overcoming differences: The border writing of Geraint Goodwin and Margiad Evans". M.A. in English Literature, University of Swansea, 2001.
Knight, S. T. A Hundred Years of Fiction: Writing Wales in English. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004.
