Ruth Bidgood

Ruth Bidgood (née Jones; 20 July 1922 – 4 March 2022) was a Welsh poet and local historian who wrote in English.

Life and career Ruth Jones was born at Blaendulais, Seven Sisters, near Neath, Wales, on 20 July 1922. Her mother, the former Hilda Garrett, was a teacher. Bidgood's Welsh-speaking father, Rev William Herbert Jones, became vicar of St Mary's Church, Aberavon, where Ruth was brought up. She was educated at a grammar school in Port Talbot, and went on to read English at St Hugh's College, Oxford.

After the war, Bidgood worked in London helping to prepare a new edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia, but eventually she and her husband, David Bidgood, whom she had married in 1946, In the 1970s, after her husband had left her,

Collections In April 2011 her collection, Time Being, was awarded the Roland Mathias Prize.

A book-length study of Bidgood's work, written by Matthew Jarvis, was published in 2012 by the University of Wales Press in the "Writers of Wales" series. The book was launched together with Bidgood's Above the Forests collection at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on 27 July 2012.

Works