Posted on 13 October 2014
Published this month by the University of Wales Press as part of their Wales and the French Revolution Series, a pioneering volume highlights for the first time Wales's contribution to the 'French Revolution debate' that unfolded in the pamphlet literature of the British isles after 1789.
Pamphleteering was a vital component of the popular political discussion opened up by the French Revolution of 1789, but while the English pamphlet wars have been exhaustively explored, Welsh pamphlet literature has been ignored. During the fifteen years following the French Revolution of 1789, over 100 Welsh pamphlets and sermons engaged in a public discourse which discussed the larger issues raised by the Revolution and the war against the French Republic.
Political Pamphlets and Sermons from Wales 1790 - 1806 by Dr Marion Löffler, is an in-depth essay which reviews the Welsh political pamphlets and sermons of the period focusing on the debates between religious Dissenters, Methodists and the Church; radicals and loyalists; as well as pacifists and patriotic war supporters. Its second part presents annotated editions of five important Welsh political pamphlets with full translation, thus making them accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time. Among the illustrations is the first political Welsh-language cartoon.
Dr Marion Löffler is a Research Fellow at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. She is also Assistant Editor of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography.
Her research focuses on the interplay of language, history, culture and nationalism, the importance of the periodical press and public discourse for the development and exchange of ideas, and the creation of public memory through such public discourse. Her other contributions to the genre-based project on Wales and the French Revolution include Welsh Responses to the French Revolution: Press and Public Discourse 1789-1802 (2012), and her forthcoming publication with Heather Williams Translating the French Revolution in Wales.
/Ends
Political Pamphlets and Sermons from Wales 1790 - 1806 by Dr Marion Löffler (University of Wales Press, October 2014)
£24.99 • PB • 9781783161003 • 156mm x 234mm • 320pp