Description
Book SynopsisJane Williams (Ysgafell) was a writer with a long and varied list of publications: poetry, fiction, a riposte to the 1847 Blue Books, the 'autobiography' of Betsi Cadwaladr, a history of Wales, a biography of the historian and patriot Carnhuanawc, and a history of women's writing in English. In her writing and her life she crossed and re-crossed boundaries - national, social, literary, linguistic and cultural - and carved out her own path. As a nineteenth-century woman whose writing career spanned fifty years and many genres, including serious non-fiction and texts in English on Wales and matters Welsh, Jane Williams is unique. This is the first full-length study of her life and work, comprising detailed original research from which the author has drawn a picture of a remarkable and impressive woman writer.
Trade Review"This elegantly written study is as engrossing as it is revealing of the life and impressive work of a sadly neglected woman writer of some importance in Welsh cultural history. Williams excelled as a redoubtable polemicist, a sophisticated biographer, a pioneering historian and a cunning ghost writer of Betsi Cadwaladr’s colorful memoirs." -- M. Wynn Thomas, Swansea University
"Ysgafell has at last been granted what she deserves in this finely detailed and highly readable critical biography, which rescues from oblivion an accomplished and versatile writer, and rediscovers for a new generation of readers a markedly intelligent and unconventional Welsh Victorian." -- Jane Aaron, University of South Wales
Table of ContentsChapter 1 - Becoming a Writer Chapter 2 - Responses to the Blue Books Chapter 3 - Varieties of Life Writing Chapter 4 - Decisions and Directions Chapter 5 -The Writing of History Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Notes Bibliography
