The remarkable biography of a mother of ten who stepped up to run her late husband’s ironworks in Victorian Wales. When impoverished aristocrat Lady Charlotte Bertie married wealthy Welsh ironmaster John Guest of Dowlais in 1833, her relatives looked on with dismay. Yet despite their vast difference of background and age, over their nineteen-year long marriage husband and wife enjoyed great happiness and much adventure. There would be ten children, and while John built up an immense commercial empire, Charlotte championed Welsh culture. Crucially, she taught herself John’s business from the inside. Over the years, she made the keenest observation of iron production, the fluctuations of the trade, and the engineering innovations. When John died in 1852, she was therefore uniquely placed to succeed him as head of the works—a remarkable position for a Victorian woman. She endeavored to introduce reforms, but also—rather to her dismay—had to weather a potentially destructive strike. But success came at a price. With her star seemingly in the ascendant, Lady Charlotte suddenly chose to abandon all, leave Wales, and marry her sons’ tutor. This book traces the ardent, creative years of her first marriage, explores her determination to preserve John’s legacy as a widow, and observes her growing devotion to the scholarly Charles Schreiber.

"Lady Charlotte's translation of the Mabinogion opens a window into several important nineteenth-century intellectual issues. It sheds light on the interrelationships among antiquarianism, philosophy, folklore collection, and children's literature that underlie the works of such seminal creators of the Victorian fairy tale as the Brothers Grimm.".

The four stories that make up the Mabinogi, along with three additional tales from the same tradition, form this collection and compose the core of the ancient Welsh mythological cycle. Included are only those stories that have remained unadulterated by the influence of the French Arthurian romances, providing a rare, authentic selection of the finest works in medieval Celtic literature. This landmark edition translated by Patrick K. Ford is a literary achievement of the highest order.

The purpose of this collection, which was first published in 1996, is to provide both an overview of the major critical approaches to the Four Branches of the Mabinogi and a selection of the best essays dealing with them. The essays examine the origins of the Mabinogion, comparative analyses, and structural and thematic interpretations. This book is ideal for students of literature and Medieval studies.

The complete collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. Drawing on pre-Christian Celtic mythology-with some of the themes having been dated back to the early Iron Age-this marvelous compendium of tales contains some of the oldest European folklore in existence. The source material-the Red Book of Hergest, or Llyfr Goch Hergest, first appeared around 1382 as a complete document, although older manuscript fragments have been found. The first volume of the Mabinogion focuses on three Welsh versions of the Arthurian Tales, called the Three Romances (Y Tair Rhamant). It contains much material not found in any other version of the Arthurian legend, and scholars hold that this was the original legend upon which all others were based. The second volume contains a number of stories from Welsh legend, dating from well before medieval times, and includes the tales of Kilhwch and Olwen-from which other Arthurian traditions were drawn. Also included is the Dream of Maxen Wledig-which tells of the Roman Emperor Magnus Maximus who, as a commander in Roman-occupied Britain, assembled a Celtic army and assumed the title of Emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The third volume focuses on the character of Pryderi fab Pwyll, king of Dyfed, and contains the Four Branches of the Mabinogi-which tell of his parents, birth, marriage, conflict, adventures, and ultimate tragedy. This volume contains the oldest works of Welsh mythology. This new edition has been completely reset, but contains all the wonderful original artwork which appeared in the famous 1902 edition assembled by Welsh scholar Owen Edwards. From the introduction: "Some of the Mabinogion [has] been reconstructed in Norman and Crusading times, but they contain reminiscences of a more distant period, often but half understood by the later story-teller. Among these are "The Dream of Rhonabwy," "The Lady of the Fountain," and "Peredur the son of Evrawc"-the three which happen to come first in the Red Book. These are Christian, but with distant glimpses of Celtic heathenism. The adventures are all grouped around Arthur and his knights; and a kind of connection is given to the three tales by the presence of Owen and his mysterious ravens. "Others, especially the four Mabinogion properly so called and the Tale of Lludd and Llevelys, are far older; they are older than Christianity, and older than Arthur . . .[they are] all in a perfectly pagan atmosphere, neither the introduction of Christianity nor the growth of chivalry having affected them to any extent." CONTENTS VOLUME I Introduction The Lady of the Fountain Peredur the Son of Evrawc The Dream of Rhonabwy VOLUME II Introduction Geraint the Son of Erbin Kilhwch and Olwen or the Twrch Trwyth The Dream of Maxen Wledig VOLUME III Introduction Pwyll Prince of Dyved Branwen the Daughter of Llyr Manawyddan the Son of Llyr Math the Son of Mathonwy Here Is the Story of Lludd and Llevelys Taliesin

Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Finalist for the Marfield Prize For fans of Book of Ages and American Eve, this “lively, illuminating new biography” (The Boston Globe) of 19th-century queer actress Charlotte Cushman portrays a “brisk, beautifully crafted life” (Stacy Schiff, bestselling author of The Witches and Cleopatra) that riveted New York City and made headlines across America. All her life, Charlotte Cushman refused to submit to others’ expectations. Raised in Boston at the time of the transcendentalists, a series of disasters cleared the way for her life on the stage—a path she eagerly took, rejecting marriage and creating a life of adventure, playing the role of the hero in and out of the theater as she traveled to New Orleans and New York City, and eventually to London and back to build a successful career. Her Hamlet, Romeo, Lady Macbeth, and Nancy Sykes from Oliver Twist became canon, impressing Louisa May Alcott, who later based a character on her in Jo’s Boys, and Walt Whitman, who raved about “the towering grandeur of her genius” in his columns for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. She acted alongside Edwin and John Wilkes Booth—supposedly giving the latter a scar on his neck that was later used to identify him as President Lincoln’s assassin—and visited frequently with the Great Emancipator himself, who was a devoted Shakespeare fan and admirer of Cushman’s work. Her wife immortalized her in the angel at the top of Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain; worldwide, she was “a lady universally acknowledged as the greatest living tragic actress.” Behind the scenes, she was equally radical, making an independent income, supporting her family, creating one of the first bohemian artists’ colonies abroad, and living publicly as a queer woman. And yet, her name has since faded into the shadows. Now, her story comes to brilliant life with Tana Wojczuk’s Lady Romeo, an exhilarating and enlightening biography of the 19th-century trailblazer. With new research and rarely seen letters and documents, Wojczuk reconstructs the formative years of Cushman’s life, set against the excitement and drama of 1800s New York City and featuring a cast of luminaries and revolutionaries who changed the cultural landscape of America forever. The story of an astonishing and uniquely American life, Lady Romeo reveals one of the most remarkable forgotten figures in our history and restores her to center stage, where she belongs.

'[This] crisply succinct, beautifully synthesized study brings to life Tesla, his achievements and failures...and the hopeful thrum of an era before world wars.' - Nature Nikola Tesla is one of the most enigmatic, curious and controversial figures in the history of science. An electrical pioneer as influential in his own way as Thomas Edison, he embodied the aspirations and paradoxes of an age of innovation that seemed to have the future firmly in its grasp. In an era that saw the spread of power networks and wireless telegraphy, the discovery of X-rays, and the birth of powered flight, Tesla made himself synonymous with the electrical future under construction but opinion was often divided as to whether he was a visionary, a charlatan, or a fool. Iwan Rhys Morus examines Tesla's life in the context of the extraordinary times in which he lived and worked, colourfully evoking an age in which anything seemed possible, from capturing the full energy of Niagara to communicating with Mars. Shattering the myth of the 'man out of time', Morus demonstrates that Tesla was in all ways a product of his era, and shows how the popular image of the inventor-as-maverick-outsider was deliberately crafted by Tesla - establishing an archetype that still resonates today.

This work provides a full glossary for perhaps the earliest of the medieval Welsh tales: Culhwch ac Olwen.