Ernest Rhys
Ernest Rhys, 1859 -1946.
Readings in Welsh History
London: Longman’s, Green and Co., 1901.
Special Collections, Golda Meir Library
(SPL) DA 715 .R48x
Originally a Welsh mining engineer, Rhys left that life in 1886 and moved to London where he became a literary editor, first for Walter Scott (the Camelot Classics) and later for J.M. Dent where in 1906, he became the editor of the Everyman Library. Rhys met Yeats through their mutual friend William Morris, and with Yeats and T.W. Rolleston founded the Rhymers’ Club in 1890.
Rhys also wrote verse. Richard Le Gallienne was the driving force behind Rhys’s first volume of poetry, A London Rose, published at the Bodley Head in 1894. Rhys never forgot his Welsh upbringing, and his knowledge of Welsh history and mythology figure prominently in much of his writing.