Overview

In the period following the French revolution in 1789, Welsh poets continually reflected on the extraordinary new era in which they lived through their writing. Effortlessly ranging from Wales's deep and distant history to accounts of the most topical and urgent current affairs, their poems on war, Welshness, druids, parted lovers and sublime landscapes encompass the beautiful, the brutal and the mysterious. Facing a future that often seemed agonisingly uncertain, poets in Wales used their verses to voice their thoughts and feelings about events that had rocked the whole of Europe, and whose effects continued to be felt long after 1789. This new selection of poetry from Wales sets recently-discovered manuscript texts alongside little-known early printed poems, offering a full and accessible introduction to Welsh poetry in English in the period 1780-1820.

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9780708325681

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Elizabeth Edwards has recuperated texts from archival and scarce print sources with meticulous scholarship, introduced them with a well-informed and illustrated survey of Anglophone poetry concerning Wales in this period, and provided full biographical and explanatory notes to stimulate further research on the subject. Edwards's path-breaking English-Language Poetry from Wales is the first ever such anthology to be published, and provides a unique insight into the literary past. Professor Caroline Franklin, Director at the Centre for Research into Gender, Culture and Society Edwards' English-Language Poetry from Wales, 1789 - 1806 is a seminal intervention. It redresses the cultural and critical 'forgetting' that has rendered more-or-less invisible the array of anglophone Welsh responses to the French Revolution and to its dramatic European fallout. A range of texts, both representative and distinctive, demonstrates the impact of the changing political climate and of total war on literary culture. What emerges is a sharp sense of the energy with which poets engaged with the full spectrum of ideological debate. From apocalyptic visions and calls-to-arms to layered topographies and mordant political sketches, Edwards' volume reveals the pressures of revolution not only on political allegiances and cultural identities, but, dramatically, on day-to-day living. Professor Damian Walford Davies, Aberystwyth University

Author Information

Elizabeth Edwards is a Research fellow at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies.

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