The Writers of Wales Database

WILLIAMS, MERRYN

Merryn Williams read English at New Hall, Cambridge and obtained a doctorate for her work on Thomas Hardy. She is the author of a number of critical prose works. Formerly a lecturer at the Open University, she is now editor of The Interpreter’s House magazine. The author of three volumes of poetry, she won the Second Light Network Poetry Competition 2003.

Translator of Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca (Bloodaxe), Merryn is also editor of the anthology In The Spirit of Wilfred Owen (Wilfred Owen Association) and the recent poetry anthology entitled The Georgians, 1901-1931 (editor) (Shoestring, 2010). She has also published studies of Thomas Hardy and a biography of the Victorian Scottish novelist Margaret Oliphant. Her title The First Wife’s Tale (Shoestring, 2006) was on the Wales Book of the Year 2007 Long List. Merryn lives in Oxford.

Selected Publications:
Revolutions (Penguin, 1971)
Thomas Hardy and Rural England (Macmillan, 1972)
Nineteenth Century Novel and its Legacy (Open Up, 1973)
Preface to Hardy (Longman, 1976)
Women in the English Novel, 1800–1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1984)
Margaret Oliphant (Palgrave Macmillan, 1986)
Six Women Novelists (Palgrave Macmillan, 1987)
A Beleaguered City (Oxford, 1988)
Hang Gliders (Aquila Publications, 1989) 
Wilfred Owen (Seren, 1993)
Clare and Effie (Honno, 1996)
Sun’s Yellow Eye (NPF Publications, 1997)
The Latin Master’s Story (Rockingham Press, 2004)
The Watsons (Pen Press, 2005)
The First Wife’s Tale (Shoestring, 2006)
Effie: A Victorian Scandal - From Ruskin's Wife to Millais's Muse (Book Guild Publishing, 2010)

Contributed to:
The Georgians, 1901-1931 (editor) (Shoestring, 2010)
The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow (co-writer) (Peresphone Books, 2010)