The Gwent landscape that inspired the novelist Alexander Cordell is to be the subject for a major writing competition sponsored by the South Wales Argus.

It was in 1957 that Cordell, still working for the War Office and struggling to find his way as a novelist, entered an Argus writing contest.

His work-in-hand about the ironworkers of Blaenavon and Garndyrus took the first prize. Two years later it was to be published in completed form as the best-selling Rape of the Fair Country, the first of 30 novels.

"It is entirely appropriate that almost 50 years on, the name of the writer should be perpetuated in a writing competition," Mike Buckingham, Argus feature writer and friend and biographer of Alexander Cordell, said at the competition's launch in Blaenavon.

"In the Big Pit Mining Museum and its famous ironworks Blaenavon has the physical reminders of the age Cordell wrote about, but these things are just bricks and buildings unless brought alive by memory and literature.

"Alexander Cordell would smile with approval and feel that his life's work was achieved if the land which so inspired him inspired others."

The Alexander Cordell Literature Competition comprises a travel writing section, and one for school entrants. In the travel section, the first prize of £500 is for the best piece of work about Cordell Country, defined as South Wales between Monmouthshire and the Vale of Neath, which Cordell used as the backdrop for many of his novels.

Second and third prizes are £300 and £150. The school prize is for work on the same subject, and is open to pupils aged 11-16 attending school in South Wales. Deadline for entries is April 30, 2004.

Bogda Smreczak, Cordell Country co-ordinator for Torfaen council, said: "With 30 books to his credit it is surprising how little Cordell has been acknowledged by the Welsh literary establishment.

"We hope this major new literature competition will go some way towards putting the record straight."

The panel of judges will include Mike Buckingham, Chris Barber, of Blorenge Books, and Frank Barrett, travel editor of the Mail on Sunday.

* Application forms are available from www.cordellcountry.org or by calling 01495 792615.