THERE’S A STARK contrast between the title of John Harris’ book, The Devil in Eden, and the unassuming, bespectacled figure depicted on its front cover. And yet David "Caradoc" Evans was at one point in time the enfant terrible of the British literary scene, thanks to a slim collection of short stories depicting life in rural Wales.

At that time in the early 20th century, such subject matter was rarely afforded serious treatment. The public record of contemporary opinion on rural Wales and Welsh life amounts to a handful of patronising remarks made by the English ruling class: it was in 1905 that H. H. Asquith said he would "sooner go to hell than to Wales."

Evans changed that. He made rural Welsh life his principal subject, and depicted it without compromise as wretched, miserable, unduly influenced by austere nonconformism. His treatment was serious—if exaggerated—but his portrayal was damning. His first book, My People, was seen by his compatriots as unprintable "filth" and, moreover, as a betrayal of the worst kind. In one vignette, Evans describes a starving old woman eating a rat. More sinister, he tells of another woman judged to be insane by her pious husband and condemned to live in a loft.

It was these tales, and others like them, that established Caradoc Evans as the titular "devil" or, in the words of the Welsh press, "the best-hated man in Wales." And yet John Harris, in this comprehensive account of the writer’s life, manages to deftly navigate a life and career chiefly known for causing outrage. In doing so, he shines a light on the literary figure who inspired Dylan Thomas, and whose debut work of fiction has since been compared favourably to Joyce’s Dubliners.

Harris paints a picture of a man vexed with the perceived hypocrisy and cruelty of those in the village in which he grew up. His childhood in Rhydlewis was impoverished and unhappy, and at the age of 14, he left for Barry, Cardiff, and then London, where he found work as a journalist.

Throughout his life, Evans seemed to define himself in opposition to what he saw around him, becoming a political radical and turning his pen to social issues such as the rights of women and workers. It was in spite of this contrarian instinct—or perhaps because of it—that Evans flourished on Fleet Street, spending five years at The Daily Mirror and then editing the literary magazine T.P.’s Weekly.

He cultivated a notorious persona, dressing in the kinds of suits and hats that would appal those of more traditional tastes back home in Rhydlewis. During a summer visit to see his sister and nephew, he describes a pair of cockle-shell glasses dangling "at the end of some sort of black string-like material" as "just for swank!" Yet this flamboyance seemed to disguise a darker Caradoc Evans—one who drank to excess, betrayed his wife, and had a vision of the world that was unrelentingly bleak. Indeed, Duncan Davies, a childhood friend, said that Caradoc’s "curious impish whimsicality" belied a "deep seriousness and sadness beneath."

From 1915 to 1946, Evans produced 11 works of fiction, in which he displayed not only his antipathy towards the country of his birth but also a highly inventive prose style which had its origins, somewhat ironically, in the Welsh tongue. None of these works come close to My People in their tone or content, which is not to say they weren’t striking: Welsh book shops refused to sell Capel Sion, Evans’s second collection of stories, in which a pregnant maid is tricked into falling into a well so the father of her child-to-be can marry someone else.  

Harris also gives considerable space to Evan’s relationship to the romantic novelist Marguerite Barcynska, with whom he conducted a long affair while still married to his first wife, Rose. The "Countess", as Evans would call her, described in her own 1946 biography of Evans the way in which he had swept her off her feet: "He stormed his way into my heart exactly as he had stormed his way through life," she said; "There was no calm in him." Harris argues that there was genuine affection between the two, and indeed it was Marguerite who would be with Evans when he died. She chose as his epitaph: "Bury me lightly so that the small rain may reach my face and the fluttering of the butterfly shall not escape my heart." Her insight into Caradoc’s character is some of the most penetrating of that offered by others quoted in the book. "In his heart Caradoc is a flaming Welshman," she said, "a Calvinistic Methodist who will never be able to extricate from Calvinism. The roots are too deep."

The exhaustiveness of Harris’s book makes clear the author’s own sincere fascination with Evans. Harris, formerly a lecturer in bibliographical studies at Aberystwyth University, said he felt a strong attraction to Caradoc Evans following a move to western Wales. An intimidating volume of papers, correspondence, articles and more strengthen his book and make it the definitive biography of a writer who remains divisive. Scholarly comparisons with Joyce and Swift, as well as praise from the formidable critic H. L. Mencken, reflect the universality of a body of work seen chiefly—and unjustly—as a mere rebellion against rural Welsh society.

Harry Readhead is a writer, editor and critic based in London. His work has been published in The Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and other outlets in the UK and US. He tweets at @henry_readhead.