Books published by University of Wales Press

Despite the great changes that the twentieth century brought to the lives and roles of the women of rural Wales, there has been scant attention paid to the topic by social scientists and historians, even within Wales. "e;Mothers, Wives and Changing Lives"e; rectifies that mistake, drawing on a wealth of family stories about women's roles in education, the church, and the family in order to address significant gaps in our knowledge of women and Welsh culture.

This volume is an introduction to crime writing in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). While "police narratives" in Spain can be traced back to iconic writers of the 19th-century, such as the Duque de Rivas, Jose Zorrilla, Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, Benito Perez Galdos, and Emilia Pardo Bazan, the volume will focus on the present day.

Huw T. Edwards was a prominent Welsh- (and English-) speaking public figure in twentieth-century Welsh society. In the 1950s he was known as 'the unofficial Prime Minister of Wales' because of his chairmanship of the Council of Wales. In 1958 Edwards resigned from the Council of Wales because the Conservative government refused to create the post of Secretary of State for Wales. In 1959 he also resigned from the Labour Party, after 50 years membership. Again, his reasons reflected a growing sense of Welsh nationalism. He had become increasingly interested in Welsh cultural and political issues and had encouraged his union to support of Coleg Harlech and the National Eisteddfod. On leaving Labour, Edwards joined Plaid Cymru. Edwards's political life, therefore, seems to reinforce the notion of fragmentation of United Kingdom identities and their replacement by distinct and politically ambitious national identities in Wales. This book suggests that close examination of Edwards political life reveals a more complex situation. Edwards's resignation from Labour was about his political desires for Wales but equally entailed a rejection of the rightward shift in British Labour politics being led by Hugh Gaitskell. Edwards's protest can therefore be viewed from the perspective of the British left as well as Welsh nationalism. Hence in 1965 Edwards rejoined Labour, because the accession of Harold Wilson to the Labour leadership and government resulted in a radicalisation of the party alongside recognition of Welsh nationhood with the establishment of a Welsh Secretary of State and a Welsh Office.

Explores the ways in which the distinctive Welsh county of Cardigan and its inhabitants (known as Cardis) have been represented during the late modern era.

This book is the first to focus on the exile-poetry link in the case of Argentina since the 1950s. Throughout Argentina's history, authors and important political figures have lived and written in exile yet, conversely, contemporary Argentina is a nation of immigrants from Europe and the rest of Latin America.

Patrick McGrath is one of Britain's foremost contemporary novelists but very little has been written about his work to date. This new book offers readings of McGrath's fiction informed by recent scholarship and evaluates his creative contribution to the continuation of the Gothic tradition into the twenty-first century.

Atlantic slavery does not loom large in the traditional telling of Welsh history. Yet Wales, like many regions of Europe, was deeply affected by the forced migration of captive Africans. Welsh commodities, like copper and brass made in Swansea, were used to purchase slaves on the African coast and some Welsh products, such as woollens from Montgomeryshire, were an important feature of plantation life in the West Indies. In turn, the profits of plantation agriculture flowed back into Wales, to be invested in new industries or to be lavished on country mansions. This book looks at Slave Wales between 1650 and 1850, bringing the most up-to-date scholarship on Atlantic slavery to bear on the Welsh experience. New research by Chris Evans casts light on previously unknown episodes, such as Welsh involvement with slave-based copper mining in nineteenth-century Cuba, and illuminates in new and disturbing ways familiar features of Welsh history - like the woollen industry - that have previously unsuspected 'slave dimensions'. Many Welsh people turned against slavery in the late eighteenth century, but Welsh abolitionism was never a particularly powerful force. Indeed, Chris Evans demonstrates that Welsh participation the slave Atlantic lasted well beyond the abolition of Britain's slave trade in 1807 and the ending of slavery in Britain's Caribbean empire in 1834.

This book provides a detailed analysis of the political arguments about the place of Muslims in contemporary France, and also discusses the ideas put forward by a range of Muslim thinkers. France has become the setting for one of the most important conflicts in the modern world. On the one hand, it possesses a rigidly organized, centralized state, whose bureaucrats and civil servants are animated by a code of secular activism. On the other hand, France is also the home for Europe's largest Muslim minority, variously estimated at numbering between four and six million people. This means that in terms of simple numbers, France can be counted as the world's fifteenth Islamic power. Previous conflicts with religion have left a deep impression on French political culture: from the sixteenth and seventeenth-century conflicts between Catholics and Protestants played to the formation of the collaborationist Vichy government in 1940. In recent decades, Muslims have been stigmatized as an irreconcilable minority unable to adapt to the secular culture of the majority of French citizens. This work draws out the political implications of the current conflict. It is based on events and publications produced in a single five year period, beginning with the shock of the 2002 Presidential elections, in which Le Pen was the second most successful candidate, ranging through the legislation of March 2004 which banned the Islamic headscarf from French state schools, and which sparked off a series of bad-tempered exchanges between left and right-wing French nationalists, anti-racism campaigners, secularists, anti-clericals and a variety of Muslim authors.

Beirdd yr Uchelwyr' in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are considered to be the pinnacle of the bardic tradition in Wales in the Middle Ages. This book gives a comprehensive look at the period's literature in all its aspects. Attention is given to masters of the cywydd, such as Dafydd ap Gwilym, Iolo Goch, Guto'r Glyn, Dafydd Nanmor and Lewys Glyn Cothi. New edition.

This book explores the neglected history of women who were active in Liberal politics, campaigning for women's rights, the vote, and a full role for women in Welsh public life, at the end of the nineteenth century, and before the First World War. The over-arching argument of the book is that Welsh women's Liberal politics was distinctive, in its attempt to integrate an understanding of Liberalism which they shared with their English counterparts, and which included the aim of full equality for women, with a distinctively Welsh political agenda, and constructions of Welsh national identity. These constructions sometimes included a positive view of women in the nation, but in times of political crisis redefined gender on a more reactionary model.

Analyzes the state of the Welsh language at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This title aims to update our understanding of Welsh as a living language; how its use, learning, understanding teaching, evolution and promulgation are developing in the world of the 21st century where Welsh is spreading to the internet and encyclopaedias.

This text refers to more than 300 Welsh graves and discusses not so much about the graves themselves but about the people buried in them. It provides potted biographies of the individuals involved and offers some intriguing juxtapositions.

This book comprises of a re-publication of Thomas Matthews' 1910 edition of Welsh documents held in the Archives Nationale of France, together with new introductions to the original work and to its editor.

As Professor of English Law at the University of London, Sir David Hughes Parry QC laid the foundations for the development of the Department of Law at the London School and Economics into a centre of excellence in legal scholarship. This study offers an account of his career as a lawyer, legal scholar, university policy-maker and law reformer.

Assesses how policies developed by the National Assembly for Wales are affecting gender inequalities and investigates whether they are having an impact on social justice for women in Wales. Focusing on distinct policy domains, this book explores gender politics in a devolved Wales.

Explores the state of French fiction through an examination of the work of five major French writers, Annie Ernaux, Pascal Quignard, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean Echenoz and Patrick Modiano. This book deals with some of the writers on British and American university French courses.

This volume approaches the fascinating figure of Iolo Morganwg - stonemason, poet and literary forger - from three distinct but interrelated angles. They all take as their starting point Iolo Morganwg's 'marginality' within mainstream literary society both in London and in Wales and demonstrate the strategies that he used to overcome the frustrations of his situation. Iolo's notoriety as a literary forger provides the context for the first discussion in the volume, which considers his efforts to pass on his own work as that of famous Welsh writers of the past. This chapter looks at how important the editorial apparatus with which Iolo surrounded his forgeries was to his attempt to ensure their satisfactory reception. Secondly, two collections of printed books owned by Iolo and containing marginal commentary in his hand are explored. The discussion here demonstrates Iolo's keen interest in the forging of a path for the Welsh language within the developing public domain of the regional eisteddfodau and also his complex personal relations with some of the more successful authors of his day. Iolo's vulnerability and marginality within the context of a Welsh public sphere are both brought to the fore in this chapter. Finally, the volume turns to the marginalia left by Iolo on letters within his collection of correspondence, showing his extraordinary creativity and bringing to attention for the first time some of his unpublished work in the fields of Welsh and English poetry and on matters relating to the Welsh language.

Uses a case study of the Denbighshire town of Ruthin to discuss both the significance of Englishness versus Welshness and of gender distinctions in the network of small Anglo-Welsh urban centres which emerged in north Wales following the English conquest of 1282.

Gender (defined as the knowledge about perceived distinctions between the sexes) is an important signifier of borders as constructed and contested lines of differences. This book explores this new interdisciplinary field and develops it further.

Herbert Williams is one of Wales' most celebrated and distinguished writers. A man of many talents, he is a poet, novelist, short story writer and historian. This book provides a critical survey of his life and writing. It is a combination of biography and critical appraisal and the chapters dovetail together to provide a continuous narrative combined with an appreciation of the man's work. It includes the following areas or elements: Biographical information, taking Herbert from his beginnings in Aberystwyth to the present day. It follows the man from his school days to early work as a journalist, from his time as a Producer at the BBC to his achievements as a poet and prose writer.It looks at the significant influences on his life - and, therefore, on his writing. These include his early days in a working-class house dominated by books with a father who actively encouraged him to read. These influences also include the writers who inspired him and his early attempts at finding his own voice, as well as Herbert's time in Bronllys Hospital, as a fifteen year old TB patient and the death of a younger brother from TB were pivotal moments in his life. They have influenced, in one way or another, almost everything he has written or spoken about since those traumatic days.The book examines in some detail the effect of these experiences on his development as a writer and as a man. It presents an analysis of the many elements of Herbert's creative life. He has always been an eclectic writer, turning his hand to biography and short stories as easily as he does to poetry. What inspires and drives Herbert Williams to keep writing and publishing, in such a wide sphere. What makes him want to communicate his ideas and emotions, often very painful ones at that?

Provides an introduction to the politics, culture, society and economy of modern Wales. This book examines the differences that are found in Wales. It focuses on the connections that have been forged across these differences and that structure Welsh society. It explores key concepts and debates in the social sciences.