Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales – serie

During Iolo Morganwg's lifetime Britain was obsessed with literary forgery. This book reveals the unexpected connections and hidden influences behind Britain's most successful (and hence, perhaps, least visible) Romantic forger. It explores Iolo's own strongly-held ideas about the Truth-historical, literary and religious.

Bardism, Iolo Morganwg's idiosyncratic bardo-druidic vision, was a radicalized version of Wales' professional poetic tradition. This volume's discussion of the layers of national, regional and personal identity in Bardism also brings into focus bardic nationalism and the tensions involved in the expression of national and regional loyalties.

Charts the public reception and criticism of Iolo Morganwg's writings, the development of his eisteddfod and gorsedd ideas. This volume contains extended selections of his writings, which intend to give the reader the opportunity to study texts of this period.

Offers insights into the career and works of Iolo Morganwg, who was one of the most creative and influential figures in the history of modern Wales. This volume contains letters, which reveal the extent of his interests and the diverse network of friends, acquaintances and enemies who brought both blessings and curses into his life.

Better known by the bardic name of Iolo Morganwg, Edward Williams was one of history's great fantasists. The legacy he left behind was a cottage filled to the ceiling with manuscripts. This volume provides a re-evaluation of the diverse interests of Iolo Morganwg and the extent to which his ideas and writings shaped the Welsh cultural tradition.

This volume approaches the fascinating figure of Iolo Morganwg – stonemason, poet and literary forger – from three distinct but interrelated angles. They all take as their starting point Iolo Morganwg’s ‘marginality’ within mainstream literary society both in London and in Wales and demonstrate the strategies that he used to overcome the frustrations of his situation. Iolo’s notoriety as a literary forger provides the context for the first discussion in the volume, which considers his efforts to pass on his own work as that of famous Welsh writers of the past. This chapter looks at how important the editorial apparatus with which Iolo surrounded his forgeries was to his attempt to ensure their satisfactory reception. Secondly, two collections of printed books owned by Iolo and containing marginal commentary in his hand are explored. The discussion here demonstrates Iolo’s keen interest in the forging of a path for the Welsh language within the developing public domain of the regional eisteddfodau and also his complex personal relations with some of the more successful authors of his day. Iolo’s vulnerability and marginality within the context of a Welsh public sphere are both brought to the fore in this chapter. Finally, the volume turns to the marginalia left by Iolo on letters within his collection of correspondence, showing his extraordinary creativity and bringing to attention for the first time some of his unpublished work in the fields of Welsh and English poetry and on matters relating to the Welsh language.

This is the first full-scale study of the political radicalism of Iolo Morganwg, the renowned Welsh romantic whose colourful life as a Glamorgan stonemason, poet, writer, political activist and humanitarian made him one of the founders of modern Wales. This path-breaking volume offers a vivid portrait of a natural contrarian who tilted against the forces of the establishment for the whole of his adult life. Known as the ‘Bard of Liberty’ or the ’little republican bard’, he moved in highly-politicized circles, embraced republicanism, founded the Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain, threw in his lot with Unitarians, promoted a sense of cultural nationalism, and supported the anti-slave trade campaign and the anti-war movement during years of war, oppression and cruelty.