Conversations and Reflections brings together the previously uncollected 'occasional writings' of Emyr Humphreys, the major novelist of twentieth-century Wales. It maps the historical and cultural background to the work of a writer who was described by R. S. Thomas as 'the supreme interpreter of Welsh life in English'.

This selection of the most important essays published by Emyr Humphreys over a fifty-year period reveals the commanding range of his interests and confirms his stature as Wales's leading man of letters. Dealing with themes ranging from sixth-century literature...

Since the earliest days of language, writers and preachers have been locked in a struggle for power and authority. In the Shadow of the Pulpit shows how that struggle has been at the heart of Welsh writing for more than two centuries, intimately shaping the English-language literature produced in Wales in that time. It traces the growing literary response to the power of Welsh Nonconformity from the eighteenth century onwards, and it also uncovers a whole new body of nineteenth-century fiction from Wales.