English-language Poetry from Wales 1789-1806

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