Torn Sails

Hugh Morgan is thinking of getting married…
Mwntseison sits on the Welsh coast and in the final years of the nineteenth century Hugh Morgan is the village Mishteer and its major employer. His sail-shed, which is managed by Ivor Parry and provides an income to most of the local households, is central to village life. The sail-shed is also the workplace of Gwladys Price – “a girl of eighteen, slim, tall, and of unusual beauty”.

Anne Adeliza Evans, 1836-1908, was born in Carmarthenshire. She became Anne Adeliza Beynon Puddicombe after her marriage but wrote under the pseudonym Allen Raine.

Her first novel, Ynysoer, was written in Welsh and was awarded joint-winner at the Caernarfon National Eisteddfod in 1894, it was later translated and published in 1909 as Where Billows Roll. After publishing A Welsh Singer in 1896 she wrote a number of novels based around the coastal areas of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire which featured the society she knew and in which she lived: Torn Sails, 1898; By Berwen Banks, 1899; Garthowen, 1900; Queen of the Rushes, 1906.

More than two million of Allen Raine’s books were sold and at least three – Torn Sails, A Welsh Singer, By Berwen Banks – were made into films. All three films are now thought to be lost.