Writers of Wales

Jane Williams (Ysgafell) was a writer with a long and varied list of publications: poetry, fiction, a riposte to the 1847 Blue Books, the 'autobiography' of Betsi Cadwaladr, a history of Wales, a biography of the historian and patriot Carnhuanawc, and a history of women's writing in English. In her writing and her life, she crossed and re-crossed boundaries — national, social, literary, linguistic and cultural — and carved out her own path. As a nineteenth-century woman whose writing career spanned fifty years and many genres, including serious non-fiction and texts in English on Wales and matters Welsh, Jane Williams is unique. This is the first full-length study of her life and work, comprising detailed original research from which the author has drawn a picture of a remarkable and impressive woman writer.

Although the legends of Arthur have been popular throughout Europe from the Middle Ages onwards, the earliest references to Arthur are to be found in Welsh literature, starting with the Welsh-Latin Historia Brittonum dating from the ninth century. By the twelfth century, Arthur was a renowned figure wherever Welsh and her sister languages were spoken. O. J. Padel now provides an overall survey of medieval Welsh literary references to Arthur and emphasizes the importance of understanding the character and purpose of the texts in which allusions to Arthur occur. Texts from different genres are considered together, and shed new light on the use that different authors make of the multifaceted figure of Arthur—from the folk legend associated with magic and animals to the literary hero, soldier and defender of country and faith. Other figures associated with Arthur, such as Cai, Bedwyr and Gwenhwyfar, are also discussed here.

This is the first biography to foreground the importance of Hester Lynch Piozzi's Welsh heritage throughout her long life. As one anonymous reader put it, 'Few eighteenth-century Welsh writers’ long resident in England continued to identify as strongly with their homeland.' Born in an obscure plwyf in Caernarvonshire the salonnière of Streatham was finally laid to rest in the vault of Tremeirchion church in the Vale of Clwyd. Hester had been mortified at the failure of her brewer husband Henry Thrale, and her mentor Dr. Samuel Johnson, to appreciate the beauties of Wales. But her second husband, musician Gabriel Piozzi, was so enamoured that he proposed residing there. Newly-found confidence inspired Piozzi to write in her middle age, and her daringly personal biography (1786) and edition of Johnson's letters (1788) were runaway bestsellers. Her travel book (1789) treated the reader for the first time as an intimate friend, recounting her love affair with her husband's homeland in Italy, whose landscape reminded her so much of Wales.

This is the first full-length study of the poet Ruth Bidgood, who is best known for her long-term literary engagement with the landscape and communities of the mid-Wales region she has made her home. Considering her entire career to date, this volume provides detailed scrutiny of Bidgood's poetry from its genesis in her formative discovery of mid-Wales in the 1960s to her 2009 prize-winning volume “Time Being”. Whilst acknowledging the breadth of Bidgood's poetic work, this book argues that her most important achievement is her creation, over many years, of what has become nothing less than a mid-Wales epic.

Bert Coombes settled in south Wales in 1909, where he worked as a miner for more than forty years. He was motivated to write after witnessing the death of two work mates underground, and he determined to tell his truth about the lives of miners and their families. His first book “These Poor Hands” was acclaimed by critics such as J. B. Priestley and Cyril Connolly and is considered to be among the most authentically vivid accounts ever written about mining. It describes with moving simplicity the harsh conditions in which he and his comrades worked and lived and the bond which existed between them in the face of poverty, hunger, danger and death. “These Poor Hands” was followed by several other books, all consistent in their philosophy, style and integrity, there is no hint of sentimentality, just immense sympathy for the miners' lot, its hardship and its humour. As the Times Literary Supplement noted in 1974, 'he was one of the few proletarian writers of the 1930s who were impressive as writers rather than proletarians'. As a result of his success Coombes became a frequent broadcaster and his Plan for Britain was published in the Picture Post. This excellent introduction to the life and work of Bert Coombes is valuable not just for its penetrating assessment of Coombes, but for the light that it sheds on the social and industrial context in which he lived. His writing articulated the social and economic injustice of contemporary capitalism and has enduring value because of the way in which it gives imaginative expression to the belief that working people should have greater control over their well-being and destiny.

Around the turn of the century, Welsh readers thrilled to the heroic stories of Owen Rhoscomyl. Having been a cowboy, frontiersman, soldier and mercenary, Rhoscomyl was as adventurous and exotic as his stories. Roving the wilds of the American West, Patagonia and South Africa before finally settling in Wales, Rhoscomyl was a flawed hero who led a rough life that exacted a personal price in poverty, delinquency and violence. He identified deeply with the Welsh nation as a source of tradition, legitimacy and belonging within a wider imperial world. As a popular commercial writer of historical romance, imperial adventure, popular history and public spectacle, he rejected accusations of national inferiority, effeminacy and defeatism in his depictions of the Welsh as an inherently masculine and martial people, accustomed to the rugged conditions of the frontier, ready to advance the glory of their nation and eager to lead the British imperial enterprise. This literary biography will explore the vaulting ambitions, real achievements, and bitter disappointments of the life, work and milieu of Owen Rhoscomyl.

“Welsh Periodicals in English” celebrates the contribution of English-language periodicals to the careers of Welsh writers (from Lewis Morris to Owen Sheers) and to the practice of their editors (from Charles Wilkins (1882) to Emily Trahair (2012)). These periodicals have helped to create an active Anglophone public sphere in Wales and continue to stimulate discussion on a wide range of topics: tensions between tradition and continuity; the role of magazines in developing new writers; gender issues; relations with Welsh-language journals; the involvement of the periodicals in social and political issues, and their contribution to cultural developments in Wales. A detailed study of the design, content and editorial practice of the periodicals is illuminated by discussions with living editors, and the book concludes with a discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary productions and a comparison with their successful equivalents in Ireland.