Books by Hilda Vaughan

A gripping Gothic tale of possession, madness and murder, Hilda Vaughan''s Harvest Home (1936), is set in Abercoran on the south-west coast of Wales in the time of George III. Daniel Hafod rides home from England one fine morning to become Master of Great House after the death of his uncle. But his obsessive pride and his dark desire for the pretty dairy-maid Eiluned lead to his downfall, as he and his sailor cousin, Dan, compete for her love. A lyrical evocation of Welsh rural life, Harvest Home is also a tautly-written psychological study of a man driven mad by desire which draws on the history of wreckers then active on the Welsh sea-coast, the legend of Blodeuwedd from the Mabinogi, and superstitions associated with Nos Calangaeaf (All Hallows Eve) when spirit voices call out the names of those soon to die.

In the first and, arguably, the finest of Hilda Vaughan's ten novels, the dawn of the twentieth century brings a new generation that clashes with the conservative traditionalism of an old Welsh way of life.Rhys Lloyd and his engagement with the ideas of Social Darwinism and the League of Nations make him a dangerous figure in the village. The son of a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist, his love for the church-going Esther reflects tensions that have long and bitterly divided the community. Most striking, however, is the stoic and determined Esther who calmly suffers the casual brutality of her agricultural upbringing, drawing on an inner strength and organic spirituality that would provide an archetype for Vaughan's later heroines. Despite a loving and sensitive depiction of her native Radnorshire landscape, Vaughan offers no rural idyll.The Battle to the Weak is a vividly drawn, socially engaged portrait of a small rural Welsh community with an awareness of its context within the wider world.