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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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ERNEST RHYS (1859 - 1946) Born in London, Rhys was brought up and educated in Carmarthen until he was six years old, when his father transferred his wine business to Newcastle. Rhys fretted in his father's office and began working as a would-be viewer in the North East coalfield. His log-book mentions the Browney valley and Low Langley farm; there is also a description of rescue operations after a firedamp blast some miles to the east at Blackhorse mine, no doubt the pit at Tudhoe. His novel of 1925 Blackhorse Pit refers to this period. Rhys eventually turned to literature and worked for the Tyneside publisher Walter Scott, a well-known figure in the Victorian reprint market, on his Camelot series from 1886. Scott, incidentally also published the Canterbury Poets which were originally edited by Joseph Skipsey (q.v.). In 1906, Rhys became the first editor of Everyman's Library under Joseph Dent (q.v.). In his memoirs Everyman Remembers and elsewhere, Rhys writes about Everyman's as if it were a religious movement, and as long as he was connected with it, the venture retained something of its messianic glow. He spoke of literature as 'the City of Books' and the notion that literature was bound up with freedom prompted one of his own Everyman volumes The Growth of Political Liberty. Rhys himself wrote verse, plays and stories. His other favourite cause was the League of Nations Union.
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