Elisabeth Inglis-Jones


Elisabeth Inglis-Jones was a Welsh novelist and biographer. In 1929, she published Starved Fields, the first of six historical novels. She was also an important writer of local history and biography. Her novel Crumbling Pageant was republished in 2015.

Biography

Born in January 1900 in London, Inglis-Jones was brought up in the village of Derry Ormond, in what is now the county of Ceredigion. She lived on the Derry Ormond Estate, which had been owned by her family since 1783. However, the house was demolished in 1953.
Inglis-Jones moved back to the London area around 1937. In her late 80s, she was living in Camberley, Surrey.

Literary career

Inglis-Jones took up writing as a child, joining a literary group called The Scratch Society when she was 12 or 13. She spent almost three years writing her first novel, Starved Fields, published in 1929. Her often reprinted Peacocks in Paradise tells of Hafod, a historic Welsh mansion, and its first owner Thomas Johnes. Her five other novels were Crumbling Pageant, Pay Thy Pleasure, The Loving Heart, Lightly He Journeyed, and Aunt Albinia.
Her works on Welsh history included The Story of Wales, describing houses demolished since 1900. Among her biographies was The Great Maria, about the writer Maria Edgeworth, The Lord of Burghley on William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley and Augustus Smith of Scilly on the 19th-century proprietor of the Isles of Scilly.
Jane Bowden, reviewing a new edition of Crumbling Pageant, praised Inglis-Jones's "undeniable talent for story-telling, characterisation and lifelong passion for Wales", qualifying her as a "great Welsh woman writer".

Selected works

;Novels
;Welsh history