Rape of the Fair Country

by Alexander Cordell Book 2 in the Mortymer Saga series.

First published 1959

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4.3(652)

Iestyn Mortymer grows to manhood in the iron country of South Wales as furnaces, pits and company power reshape the valleys. The Mortymers live among miners and ironworkers whose wages, housing and safety depend upon employers able to dominate whole communities. Love, family loyalty and personal ambition unfold against growing resistance to industrial exploitation and political exclusion.
The novel connects the family story to the birth of trade union organisation and the rise of Chartism, presenting industrial change as a conflict over dignity as well as wages. Cordell’s landscape is repeatedly scarred by slag, smoke and extraction, while the workers’ demand for representation gives the story its political momentum. It is the central opening novel of the Mortymer story and the book on which Cordell’s reputation as a novelist of industrial Wales was founded.