Woman on a Mission

During an age of extreme gender polarisation when women were confined to the domestic sphere, Sarah Jane Rees (1839–1916) from Llangrannog, better known by her bardic name Cranogwen, won high esteem as a poet, lecturer, journal editor, preacher and temperance campaigner. She also succeeded in her aim of inspiring other Welsh women to overcome class and gender barriers and enter the public sphere, and was hailed as a pioneering forerunner of the ‘New Woman’. This biographical volume follows her through the various stages of her career from early years as a sailor, showing how an underprivileged woman succeeded in winning such influential renown. New light is also thrown on her homosexual love life, and her progressive views on gender – ‘gender difference is nothing’, she proclaimed in 1888. 

The Welsh-language version of this volume, entitled Cranogwen, won the Wales Book of the Year award for creative non-fiction in 2024. 

‘This volume on the poet, women’s magazine editor, international public lecturer and political campaigner Cranogwen is a masterclass on linking life and literature, and on presenting poetry in translation. It introduces one of the most charismatic figures of nineteenth-century Wales to an international audience. In lively prose, Jane Aaaron leads us from Cranogwen’s childhood in poverty-stricken seaside village Llangrannog to a poetic stardom doubted by male bards: we accompany Cranogwen on lecture tours in north America, campaign with her in the valleys of south Wales, and feel the love she shares with her woman … in an elegant and multifaceted volume you will read again and again.’

Dr Marion Löffler, Reader in Welsh History and History, Cardiff University