The Welsh Boy

The Welsh Boy , a lusty tale of youthful passion, is a scintillating rediscovery of one of the hidden gems of eighteenth century literature bringing back to life a true story of passionate love and outrageous sexual scandal. James ‘Jem’ Parry is blessed with a wonderful singing voice that has allowed him to escape his humble origins in South Wales. Mary Powell is the richest heiress in the district and also its loveliest, and its most daring. When Mary engages Jem as her music master their lessons at the spinet turn into tutorials in the most heavenly pleasures. But love is one thing, sex another and marriage yet a third. The Welsh Boy is based on The True Anti-Pamela , the personal diaries of James Parry which he had published as an act of revenge against his former lover Mary Powell. He saw their torrid affair as a direct inversion of Samuel Richardson's contemporary bestseller, Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded , with himself in the role of lowly-born innocent and his lover the aristocratic villain of the piece.