Gwenallt (the bardic name of David James Jones, 18 May 1899 – 24 December 1968), poet, critic, and scholar, was one of the most important figures of 20th-century Welsh-language literature.[1]
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He was born in Pontardawe, Glamorganshire, the eldest son of Thomas ‘Ehedydd’ Jones and his wife Mary. Conscripted into the Army in 1917 during World War I, he declared himself a conscientious objector and was imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubs and Dartmoor from June 1917 to May 1919, an experience he wrote about in his 1934 novel Plasau'r Brenin. In 1919 he enrolled at University College Wales, Aberystwyth, where he met the writer Idwal Jones whose biography he was to write in 1958.[2]
His poem, Y Mynach, won him the Chair at the National Eisteddfod of Wales held in Swansea in 1926, and he won the Chair for a second time at Bangor in 1931. He was a founder member of the Welsh Academy (Academi Gymraeg) and edited its magazine, Taliesin, from 1961 to 1965. On graduating from Aberystwyth with a BA in Welsh and English, he became a teacher of Welsh at Barry County School and later, in 1927, was appointed Lecturer in the Welsh Department of University College Wales, Aberystwyth.[3] Jones took his MA in 1929 and he was awarded a D.Litt honoris causa by the University of Wales in 1967. He was an early member of Plaid Cymru.
Christian themes are present in much of his work, not least in Y Coed, which was published following a visit to the Holy Land.
He is buried at Aberystwyth. A memorial plaque was placed on his house, Rhydymôr, Ffordd Rheidol, Penparcau, Aberystwyth, in 1997.[4]