Scribblertown by Aberystwyth’s Mary Burdett-Jones describes a seaside university town not unlike the recently-designated UNESCO City of Literature.

The English translation of her own Welsh-langauge novel Llanllenorion has a range of characters: a publisher raised in London, a scholar dedicated to his work, an artist, an actress, among others.

We learn about the relationship of these characters to each other as we read about the dreams of the main character.

This is Mary’s first novel, but she has already published a volume of her poetry in Welsh, Lluniadau (2020), together with a volume of Welsh translations of the German poems of Selma Merbaum, who died in the Holocaust.

Poetry plays a leading role in Scribblertown as well, as a number of Mary’s poems and translations are woven into the text in a unique way.

Mary said: “The title of the book for years was ‘Symphony’ until I remembered the title of a number of essays on the literary figures of Llanidloes by the mid-nineteenth-century journalist Matthew Lewis on whom my husband Philip Henry Jones has done research. They described a town where there was a thriving Welsh-language literary life, ‘Llanllenorion’, literally ‘Town of Litterateurs’. When thinking about how to render this in English, I struck on Scribblertown.”

Adam Pearce, editor and owner of publisher Melin Bapur said: “It is a privilege to have this important work entrusted to us, a work which is, in my opinion, quite unique in Welsh literature. I have never come across a book which combines styles and even literary forms in this way. Scribblertown is a challenging, experimental work, but it is a testimony to Mary’s obvious talent as a novelist – and as a poet!

“The story grips you straight away.

It’s incredible to think that this is her first novel – but we hope not the last!

Scribblertown and Llanllenorion are available from www.melinbapur.cymru.