Wales and the Romantic Imagination

"Wales and the Romantic Imagination" is the first study devoted exclusively to the appropriation of Wales, its landscape, history, and culture, by writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The collection is diverse yet integrated, and the essays engage meaningfully in dialogue with one another. The volume represents a key intervention in on-going debates about the relation between Romanticism and national identity, antiquarianism, politics, print culture and gender. The essays in this collection fill an important gap in our current understanding of how Romanticism constituted itself out of diverse cultural experiences. The book is likely to prove indispensable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Romanticism: because of the current interest in the Celticity of Romanticism there is likely to be a healthier international market for this volume than for many books of Welsh interest. At the same time it is also lucid enough to attract the lay reader interested in Welsh culture and the construction of national identities. No other study explores the literary representation and construction of Wales by visitors and native inhabitants in the Romantic period. This book complements recent studies such as Leith Davies, Ian Duncan and Janet Sorensen's "Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism" Cambridge University Press (2004), Gerrard Carruthers and Alan Rawes' "English Romanticism and the Celtic World" Cambridge University Press (2003), Ina Ferris's "The Romantic Tale and the Question of Ireland" Cambridge University Press (2002) and Katie Trumpener's "Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire" Princeton University Press (1997).