This book is a comprehensive single-volume history of literature in the two major languages of Wales from post-Roman to post-devolution Britain.

This is the first study of the Anglo-Welsh border region in the period before the Norman arrival in England, from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Its conclusions significantly alter our current picture of Anglo/Welsh relations before the Norman Conquest by overturning the longstanding critical belief that relations between these two peoples during this period were predominately contentious. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates that the region which would later become the March of Wales was not a military frontier in Anglo-Saxon England, but a distinctively mixed Anglo-Welsh cultural zone which was depicted as a singular place in contemporary Welsh and Anglo-Saxon texts. This study reveals that the region of the Welsh borderlands was much more culturally coherent, and the impact of the Norman Conquest on it much greater, than has been previously realised.

A Bibliography of Welsh Literature in English Translation is a groundbreaking volume that maps for the first time the translation history of Wales's two languages. This is also the first listing of Welsh-English literary translations and should be an indispensable tool not only for scholars but also for lay readers and for students of Celtic and Welsh literatures. As a resource that opens up for the first time one of the richest fields of translation in the British context, this bibliography is also a pioneering Welsh contribution to the burgeoning academic field of translation studies. The Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales (CREW), directed by Professor M. Wynn Thomas, received a prestitgious research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board for a one-year project in 2001 that was to culminate in a web-based database, an international conference and this published volume. S. Rhian Reynolds was employed as the postdoctoral research officer for the project, which grew far beyond the expected lifespan due to the wealth and quantity of the material uncovered. Translation practice has encompased the whole wealth of Welsh-language literature and among the thousands of translations recorded here are the acknowledged classics of European culture---The Mabinogion, the work of Dafydd ap Gwilym, the hymns of William Williams Pantycelyn and the plays, fiction, and political writings of Saunders Lewis. Ever since Welsh-English translation was first instigated in the eighteenth century it has provided an invaluable interface between Wales and the wider world (even non-anglophone cultures usually discover Welsh-language literature through the medium of English), between Wales and the other countries of the British Isles and (most importantly of all, perhaps) between the two cultures of Wales itself.

For a small land, Wales has produced an extraordinarily large and accomplished body of literature. The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales provides an excellent guide to Welsh literary heritage, ranging from the Druids and the days of King Arthur to the present-day flowering of Welsh national consciousness. In a little less than 3,000 entries, it captures the complexities of Welsh poetic art, the lives and achievements of its greatest writers, the myths, legends and colorful folktales, and the events and movements that have informed its history. A wealth of detailed information, the Companion is indispensable for anyone interested in the literature and culture of Wales.

THE WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH LITERATURE An insightful guide to the exploration of modern British and Irish literature The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to navigate the world of new British and Irish writing. Including modern authors and poets from the 1960s through to the 21st century, the Companion provides a thorough overview of contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama by some of the most prominent and noteworthy writers. Seventy-three comprehensive chapters focus on individual authors as well as such topics as Englishness and identity, contemporary Science Fiction, Black writing in Britain, crime fiction, and the influence of globalization on British and Irish Literature. Written in four parts, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature includes comprehensive examinations of individual authors, as well as a variety of themes that have come to define the contemporary period: ethnicity, gender, nationality, and more. A thorough guide to the main figures and concepts in contemporary literature from Britain and Ireland, this two-volume set: Includes studies of notable figures such as Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter, as well as more recently influential writers such as Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. Covers topics such as LGBT fiction, androgyny in contemporary British Literature, and post-Troubles Northern Irish Fiction Features a broad range of writers and topics covered by distinguished academics Includes an analysis of the interplay between individual authors and the major themes of the day, and whether an examination of the latter enables us to appreciate the former. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature provides essential reading for students as well as academics seeking to learn more about the history and future direction of contemporary British and Irish Literature.

Complex and controversial issues have accompanied the development of English-language literature in Wales, generating a continuing debate over the nature of Welsh writing in English. The main issues include the claim of some Welsh-language writers to represent the only authentic literature of Wales, the question of whether or not an extended literary tradition in English has existed in Wales, the absence (until fairly recently) of a publishing apparatus for English-language writers, the rise of a Welsh nationalism committed to preserving the Welsh language, and the question of whether English-language literature in Wales can be distinguished from English literature proper. The primary impulse for the interviews with the thirteen writers and editors in Writing on the Edge was to explore these and other issues relating to the literary and cultural identity in Wales in the last decade. The book's title reflects these ongoing debates about the nature and direction of contemporary Welsh literature in English, which is often perceived as peripheral both to Welsh-speaking Wales and to the literary culture of England. As one of the contributors to the volume says This is what it is to be Welsh ... It's an edge. There's no moment of life in Wales that hasn't got that edge, unless you decide you're not Welsh.

Published to mark the centenary of Roald Dahl’s (Welsh) birth, Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected breaks new ground by revealing the place of Wales in the imagination of the writer known as ‘the world’s number one storyteller’. Exploring the complex conditioning presence of Wales in his life and work, the essays in this collection dramatically defamiliarise Dahl and in the process render him uncanny. Importantly, Dahl is encountered whole – his books for children and his fiction for adults are read as mutually invigorating bodies of work, both of which evidence the ways in which Wales, and the author’s Anglo-Welsh orientation, demand articulation throughout the career. Recognising the impossibility of constructing a monolithic ‘Welsh’ Dahl, the contributors explore the compound and nuanced ways in which Wales signifies across the oeuvre. Roald Dahl: Wales of the Unexpected takes Dahl studies into new territory in terms of both subject and method, showing the new horizons that open up when Dahl is read through a Welsh lens. Locating Dahl in illuminating new textual networks, resourcefully offering fresh angles of entry into classic Dahl texts, rehabilitating neglected Dahl texts, and analysing the layered genesis of (seemingly) familiar works by excavating the manuscripts, this innovative volume brings Dahl ‘home’ in order to render him invigoratingly unhomely. The result is not a parochialisation of Dahl, but rather a new internationalisation.

First published in 1968, The Dragon Has Two Tongues was the first book-length study of the English-language literature of Wales. Glyn Jones (1905–95) was one of Wales’s major English-language writers of fiction and poetry, and the book includes chapters dealing with the work of Dylan Thomas, Caradoc Evans, Jack Jones, Gwyn Thomas and Idris Davies, all of whom the author knew personally. This first-hand knowledge of the writers, coupled with the shrewdness of Glyn Jones’s critical comments, established The Dragon Has Two Tongues as a classic and invaluable study of this generation of Welsh writers. It also contains Glyn Jones’s own autobiographical reflections on his life and literary career, his loss and rediscovery of the Welsh language, and the cultural shifts that resulted in the emergence of a distinctive English-language literature in Wales in the early decades of the twentieth century. This edition of The Dragon Has Two Tongues was edited by Tony Brown, who discussed the book with Glyn Jones before his death in 1995 with unique access to the author’s proposed revisions and manuscript drafts, and it was first published by the University of Wales Press in 2001.