Rape of the Fair Country is a novel by Alexander Cordell

Alexander Cordell

Alexander Cordell was the pen-name of George Alexander Graber, a prolific Welsh novelist and author of thirty acclaimed works including Rape of the Fair Country, The Hosts of Rebecca and Song of the Earth....

, first published in 1959. It is the first in Cordell's "Mortymer Trilogy", followed by The Hosts Of Rebecca

The Hosts of Rebecca

The Hosts of Rebecca is a novel by Alexander Cordell, first published in 1960. It is the second in Cordell's "Mortymer Trilogy", followed by Song of the Earth....

(1960) and Song of the Earth

Song of the Earth

Song of the Earth is a novel by Alexander Cordell, first published in 1969. It is the final book of Cordell's "Mortymer Trilogy".Cordell's 3rd book in the lives of the Mortimer family, after Rape of the Fair Country and Hosts of Rebecca. It is a prequel to Rape of the Fair County with the Mortymer...

(1969). The book has been translated into seventeen languages.

Cordell's style and subject matter are reminiscent of Richard Llewellyn

Richard Llewellyn

Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd , better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, was a Welsh novelist.Llewellyn Richard Dafydd Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd (8 December 1906 – 30 November 1983), better known by his pen name Richard Llewellyn, was a Welsh novelist.Llewellyn Richard Dafydd...

's How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, telling the story through narration of the main character, of his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The author had claimed to have based the book on his own knowledge of the Gilfach Goch area, but this was proven...

.

Plot summary

The plot concerns the Welsh

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 iron

Iron

Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...

-making communities of Blaenavon

Blaenavon

Blaenavon is a town and World Heritage Site in south eastern Wales, lying at the source of the Afon Lwyd north of Pontypool, within the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire. The town lies high on a hillside and has a population of 6,349 people...

 and Nantyglo

Nantyglo

Nantyglo is a village in the ancient parish of Aberystruth and county of Monmouth situated deep within the South Wales Valleys between Blaina and Brynmawr in the county borough of Blaenau Gwent.- Places of interest in Nantyglo :...

 in the 19th century. The action is seen through the eyes of young Iestyn Mortymer who grows up in times of growing tensions between ironmaster

Ironmaster

An ironmaster is the manager – and usually owner – of a forge or blast furnace for the processing of iron. It is a term mainly associated with the period of the Industrial Revolution, especially in Great Britain....

s and Trade Union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

ists. In 1826, when the book starts, Iestyn is eight years old and already beginning work at the Garndyrus furnaces near Blaenavon. His sister Morfydd has strong feelings about women and children working in mines and ironworks. She sympathises with the Chartist

Chartism

Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...

 movement and condemns the action of the militant Scotch Cattle

Scotch Cattle

Scotch Cattle was the name taken by bands of coal miners in 19th century South Wales, analogous to the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania, who, in disguise, would visit the homes of other local miners who were working during a strike or cooperating with employers against the local mining community in...

. In this she is in opposition to Hywel Mortymer, their conservative father who later begins to question his own loyalty to the ironmaster.

Story

Cordell's first successful novel draws the hardship of life in early industrial Wales with the father starting off as positive towards the Engish coal and iron masters of the time but then on seeing his family and neighbours suffer (and sometime die) he revolts with his son, Iestyn to protest. The family life leads to the fight for trade unions and the Chartist movement. The historical background against which the novel is set is described in considerable detail with profoundly researched events like the 1839 Newport Insurrection

Newport Rising

The Newport Rising was the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain, when on 4 November 1839, somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 Chartist sympathisers, including many coal-miners, most with home-made arms, led by John Frost, marched on the town of Newport,...

show this book to be worthy of the best seller it achieved in the UK as well as the USA. Cordell told of the story of the Chartist movement starting in Wales accurately and clearly like no other, but with a background of humanity of the Mortymer family.