Alexander Cordell - Writing Career

Writing Career

Some of his most famous works— Rape of the Fair Country (1959), The Hosts of Rebecca (1960) and Song of the Earth (1969)—form the "Mortymer Trilogy", and are part of a series of Cordell novels that portray the turbulent history of early industrial Wales as vividly as any writer has achieved. Faithful to historical fact, he presents events like the birth of trade unionism and rise of the Chartist movement and the Newport Rising.

The Mortymer Trilogy is the story of the Mortymer family, commencing in 1826, and tells of the trials of several generations of the family, set against the background of the coal mining and iron industries. In 1985, at the suggestion of fellow South Wales author, Chris Barber, Cordell wrote a prelude to the trilogy, This Proud and Savage Land, which starts in 1800 and tells the story of sixteen year old Hywel Mortymer, who comes from rural Mid Wales to work in the coal mines and ironworks of the industrial South Wales Valleys, owned by early ironmasters and coalowners. It ends with the birth of his son Iestyn, with which the next book commences.

In 1963 he published The Race of the Tiger, a novel about an Irish clan, the O'Haras, who in the mid-19th century emigrate to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, to work in the booming iron and steel industry.

In 1972, Cordell wrote The Fire People, set in Merthyr Tydfil. It is set against the background of the 1831 Merthyr Rising, for which Cordell did considerable research. An appendix to the book presents evidence suggesting that Richard Lewis, known as Dic Penderyn, may have been unjustly condemned to be hanged, for which he has become known as the first Welsh working-class martyr.