Try the Wilderness First

Try the Wilderness First: Eric Gill & David Jones at Capel-y-Ffin is the story of controversial artist Eric Gill’s artistic and religious community in the Black Mountains of Wales during the 1920s, told through the character and work of Gill himself and poet and artist David Jones, two of Britain’s most significant twentieth century artists. In it Jonathan Miles offers a commentary on the radical Catholicism of Gill and on the community’s Arts and Crafts-style focus on the handmade at its home in a former monastery. Capel-y-ffin’s remoteness offered Gill time to develop his religious thinking and also to experiment sexually in a period in which he was intensely busy as an artist. For the sexually repressed Jones, on the other hand, it offered escape from his wartime experiences and a cultural homecoming which resulted in a productive period of painting and engraving.

The personality and practice of both men was to be marked indelibly by their time there and in this new edition of his book Jonathan Miles, incorporates new images and new research into a page-turning and accessible narrative.