Welsh Poetry of the French Revolution 1789-1805

The volume represents original archival research and textual scholarship. It comprises a critical introduction to the edited texts (25,000 words); a scholarly edition of 59 strict- and free-metre poems from manuscript and eighteenth-century print sources (26,500 words); literal English translations of the texts presented parallel to the Welsh originals (31,900 words); bibliographical notes on the authors and notes on the texts (22,000 words). The texts provide a unique and valuable resource for Welsh speakers, and the translations ensure that hitherto inaccessible texts are available to those without a knowledge of the Welsh language. The critical introduction provides a new narrative of the distinctive shape that Crown loyalism took in Wales, and the specifically bardic frame that Welsh poets chose for their responses (whether politically radical or reactionary; whether for popular or elite consumption) to the French Revolution and the revolutionary controversy in Wales.The volume represents original archival research both in the textual edition of previously unpublished poetry and in the substantial critical introduction and notes to the texts. The critical introduction provides a new narrative of the distinctive shape that Crown loyalism took in Wales, and the specifically bardic frame that Welsh poets chose for their responses (whether politically radical or reactionary; whether for popular or elite consumption) to the French Revolution and the revolutionary controversy in Wales