pp xvii299
0-7083-1162-8 hardback 1992
0-7083-1163-6 paperback reprinted 1995
‘A superb anthology of verse and prose drawing on 10 centuries of Welsh and English literature inspired by the Welsh mountains ... This is a wonderful evocation of the grey stones and blue remembered shadows that have always fallen heavily over the literature of Wales.’ (Newlines)
‘This is a great book to keep by the fire for dark winter evenings spent dreaming of the next weekend away - even better, put it in your rucksack when you next head for that sheltered spot on Cadair Idris.’ (New Scientist)
‘ . . . if you want to be greatly and very pleasurably enriched, read The Mountains of Wales.’ (The Association of British Members of the Swiss Alpine Club Journal)
‘One of the most satisfying and rewarding books I have read for a long time . . . so evocative of the feelings and experiences of those who visit the Welsh mountains’. (Country Quest)
An anthology of verse and prose about the mountains of Wales, their scenery, their history, their communities and the way they have inspired native and traveller alike.
Drawing on ten centuries of Welsh and English literature, this anthology ranges from the oldest traditions about Arthur to the autobiography of a hill farmer's wife published in 1979; from Giraldus Cambrensis's reaction to Snowdonia in 1188 to that of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In between came the heroic Wales of the Princes, the pioneer naturalists, Pennant and the early travellers, the great English romantic poets, the first climbers, artists like Augustus John and John Piper, writers like Edward Thomas and Robert Graves, T.H. Parry-Williams and R.S. Thomas.
There are passages written from the viewpoint of those who live in the mountains, though scenery prevails over sociology and the indigenous writers of this century intermingle with incomers from the towns. The anthology ends with extracts in which the mountains evoke something greater than themselves and defy chronology.
The selection is edited with an introduction by Ioan Bowen Rees, a man who was born and brought up at the foot of Cadair Idris. Well-known in mountaineering circles, he has climbed and wandered in the Welsh mountains for over forty years, as well as visiting the Alps, the Rocky Mountains, the Andes and the Himalaya. He was Chief Executive of Gwynedd County Council, 1980-1991.