Category talk:Novels set in Wales

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Novels

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Wales setting (and Welsh fantasy)

How much fictionalization of Wales as a setting should this cover?

If Mabinogion were a novel would it belong here? (Discussed below, Walton's fiction is clearly set in that world and Alexander's is set in a world partly inspired by it.)

Among 20th century English-language fantasy novels, I find one of the four-volume Mabinogion series by Evangeline Walton; one of the five-volume Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander; one one of the five-volume Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper; and The Magician Trilogy by Jenny Nimmo.

USAmerican Evangeline Walton's novels are retellings of the four branches. According to our biography, "Walton corresponded with the Welsh novelist, essayist and poet John Cowper Powys for many years." ... and he praised the one volume published while she was young and he was alive.

As a setting, USAmerican Lloyd Alexander's Prydain is inspired by Welsh mythology and by his WWII training in Wales; many plot elements are derived from Welsh mythology. Mona and Llyr, of the one volume cat here (The Castle of Llyr), are remotely fictionalized Anglesey and Holyhead. (I wonder whether his Prydain novels would have been eligible for the Tir na n-Og Award, inaugurated ten years later.)

English-born American(?) Susan Cooper won that inaugural Tir na n-Og Award for the The Grey King, fourth in the series and the one in this category; and won another for the fifth book. It's low fantasy set almost entirely in modern Wales, as are some others in the series, which entirely concerns Brythonic mythology. --if i understand correctly, not Welsh but British, yet relevant articles seem to be in our category Category:Breton mythology and folklore.

English-born Welsh(?) Jenny Nimmo also won the Tir na n-Og Award, for the The Snow Spider, first volume of the trilogy in this category (whose volumes do not have their own articles). It's another low fantasy set in modern Wales.

(?) --I'm not confident about the meaning of those compound terms--

Certainly the works by Cooper and Nimmo belong in this category. I have covered them here in moderate depth mainly because I enquire at once about the scope of Category:Welsh fantasy novels as well as this one. There I will link here with a brief note.

Thank you for your time. --P64 (talk) 17:42, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]