Kathryn Smithies explores the inspiration behind Introducing the Medieval Ass, a title in our expanding Medieval Animals series. Ever since I was a small child and found a Ladybird book at my grandparents’ home, I’ve always had a soft spot for donkeys. In that book, Ned the Lonely Donkey, Ned sought companionship and eventually found
Nicola Bruton Bennetts introduces William Morgan: Eighteenth-Century Actuary, Mathematician and Radical. This biography began in a tea caddy, part of a legacy from a maiden aunt. A beautiful mahogany tea caddy, inside which was a clutch of letters – sepia writing on brittle, snuff-coloured paper, shedding new light on the life of my great-great-great-grandfather William
We are delighted to announce the new Advisory Board for the Wales Journal of Education. The Advisory Board is formed of key representatives from across the education sector in Wales, playing an important role in acting as advocates for the Journal in its new Open Access era, and engaging with the direction of the Journal
The editors of Utopia and Reality: Documentary, Activism and Imagined Worlds introduce their edited volume in our New Dimensions in Science Fiction series. The literary genre of utopia has a long and venerable tradition. Starting with the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia in 1516, there has been a steady stream of works that depict a
Jonathan Newell introduces A Century of Weird Fiction, 1832-1937: Disgust, Metaphysics and the Aesthetics of Cosmic Horror. Deliquescent corpses murmuring from beyond the grave; slimy molluscoid horrors oozing through the ancient hills; a ravenous, miles-long pig stirring in a miasmatic abyss – the pages of weird fiction teem with grotesques, a bestiary of dripping, festering,
Sam Blaxland introduces his new book, Swansea University: Campus and Community in a Post-War World, 1945–2020. At the end of 2016, I was employed by Swansea University to collect a series of oral history interviews that would be part of marking the institution’s centenary in 2020. The following year, the project expanded and we decided
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas introduces her book Masks in Horror Cinema: Eyes Without Faces. In 2019, the University of Wales Press published my book, Masks in Horror Cinema: Eyes Without Faces, as part of its Horror Studies series. During the many years of research and writing that led to the book’s release, one question was always at
I am delighted to announce that we have confirmed our brand new Journal Editor team for the Wales Journal of Education: Gary Beauchamp from Cardiff Metropolitan University, Thomas Crick from Swansea University, and Enlli Thomas from Bangor University. Our new Journal Editors bring with them a wealth of educational experience. Each has a strong track
The publication of the third edition of Coastal Systems in 2016 by the University of Wales Press was timed so that, as I outline in my preface to the book, the edition included the most up-to-date information from the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2014. Indeed, the publication
Jen Wilson introduces her book, Freedom Music: Wales, Emancipation and Jazz 1850-1950 This book was a slow burn, probably from that day in school when the piano lid was slammed down by the deputy head, near-missing my fingers, all for ‘lowering the decorum of the whole school’ etc. I was 14, and the piano remained
A new series from the University of Wales Press, introduced by series editors Dr Diane Heath and Dr Victoria Blud. Animals are good to think with, wrote Claude Lévi-Strauss, and ‘Medieval Animals’ is designed to enable the curious reader to do just that. The aim of this series is to promote work that challenges preconceptions about
Luci Attala introduces How Water Makes Us Human: Engagements with the Materiality of Water, the first book in the Materialities in Anthropology and Archaeology series. I am not a great water drinker; I prefer to get into it. As I have grown older it is the quietness that is created by going deep under the water that
David Stephenson introduces Medieval Wales c.1050-1332: Centuries of Ambiguity. Long after it was published in 1911, Sir John Edward Lloyd’s History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest remained the most influential book on the medieval centuries in Wales. The picture painted by Lloyd was in essence simple: a succession of great Welsh
David Callander introduces Dissonant Neighbours: Narrative Progress in Early Welsh and English Poetry. Scholars in recent years have shown an increased and more explicit interest in medieval multilingualism. The study of codices and texts in multiple languages, quite a norm for much of the medieval period, has led to exciting new work and opened up fresh avenues
Gethin Matthews introduces Having a Go at the Kaiser: A Welsh Family at War, which has been nominated for Wales Book of the Year 2019. The book ‘Having a Go at the Kaiser’: A Welsh Family at War was launched at an event in Mynyddbach chapel, north Swansea, on 8 November 2018. It is based
The University of Wales Press is delighted to receive two nominations for Wales Book of the Year 2019. Congratulations to Gethin Matthews and Lisa Sheppard, whose books have been shortlisted in the Creative Non-fiction category. Having a Go at the Kaiser: A Welsh Family at War by Gethin Matthews This book is based on more
Elizabeth Neiman introduces her new book, Minerva’s Gothics: The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820. Between 1790 and 1820, William Lane’s London printing press Minerva published an unprecedented number of novels, many by obscure female authors. Because Minerva novels catered to the day’s fashion for sentimental themes and Gothic romance, they were and still are
John Baylis introduces his new book, Wales and the Bomb: The Role of Welsh Scientists and Engineers in the British Nuclear Programme. The history of the British nuclear weapons programme from the Second World War onwards is now well known. We also know quite a lot about some of the central figures, like William Penney, involved
Daniel McCann introduces his new book, Soul-Health: Therapeutic Reading in Later Medieval England. The connection between reading and healing has a history far deeper and far darker than modern ‘bibliotherapeutics’ would lead us to believe. While you don’t have to look far to find accounts of ‘consoling fictions’ offering mental and physical health, looking a
Kathleen Hudson introduces her new book, Servants and the Gothic, 1764-1831: A half-told tale. In William Godwin’s 1794 novel Things as they are, or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, servant protagonist Caleb recounts a story of a complicated, often antagonist employer-employee relationship as a means of preventing the circulation of a future ‘half-told and mangled tale’.
Rhiannon Ifans introduces her new book, Red Hearts and Roses? Welsh Valentine Songs and Poems. Who was Saint Valentine, the saint who gave his name to the festival of lovers? Where do red hearts and roses fit in? Or do they? This volume is a lively introduction to a little known subject, the celebration of Saint
Kathrin McCann introduces her new book, Anglo-Saxon Kingship and Political Power: Rex gratia Dei. During the late 8th century it was said that England’s powerful ruler, King Offa of Mercia, sought to depose Pope Hadrian. He allegedly hoped to persuade his role model, Charlemagne of Francia, to replace the current pontiff with a Frankish ally. The pope,
David Annwn Jones introduces his new book, Re-envisaging the First Age of Cinematic Horror, 1896-1934: Quanta of Fear. Currently, if you Google the name Nosferatu, you’ll receive well over six million hits – that is in relation to a silent film nearly a century old, and for long considered lost. The remarkable longevity of fear and
Aled Eirug introduces his new book, The Opposition to the Great War in Wales 1914-1918. As we arrive at the hundredth anniversary of the end of the Great War, it is timely to consider how the war affected not only those 35,000 Welshmen and 780,000 British servicemen killed as a result of their war service,
Jonathan Lewis introduces his new book, The Algerian War in French/Algerian Writing: Literary Sites of Memory. The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62), which led to the birth of the Algerian nation and marked the end of the French Empire, remains a divisive topic in contemporary France. Characterized as a ‘war without a name’ for decades after
Richard Leahy introduces his new book, Literary Illumination: The Evolution of Artificial Light in Nineteenth-Century Literature. It is easy to take artificial illumination for granted in our modern, twenty-first century culture of twenty-four hour supermarkets and brightly-lit roads and streets, yet this technology has only really shaped our lives for the past century and a half
By Rebecca Duncan, author of South African Gothic: Anxiety and Creative Dissent in the Post-apartheid Imagination and Beyond. Emerging in the shadow of eighteenth-century Enlightenment, as the first shudders of industrialising change were becoming palpable in Britain, Gothic fictions have, over the two hundred and fifty years since the mode’s genesis, tended to proliferate at moments
From August 23rd 2018, the University of Wales Press will be located at the University Registry in Cardiff’s Civic Centre. Our new address is: University of Wales Press University Registry King Edward VII Avenue Cathays Park Cardiff CF10 3NS For general enquiries: Telephone: 44 (0) 29 2049 6899 E-mail: press@press.wales.ac.uk The University Registry was built
Ignacio Aguiló introduces his new book, The Darkening Nation: Race, Neoliberalism and Crisis in Argentina. At the turn of the twentieth century, and after a decade of drastic neoliberal reforms, Argentina experienced the worst economic crisis in its history. At the time, half of the population was living in poverty, the unemployment rate was 25% and
Rachael Jones introduces her new book, Crime, Courts and Community in Mid-Victorian Wales: Montgomeryshire, People and Places. Montgomeryshire is a marvellous place in which to live. It has a stunning landscape and friendly and welcoming people. It has a fascinating history too – particularly, for me, around the nineteenth century when the rural and agricultural nature of
The University of Wales Press wishes to send its deepest condolences to the family of Dr Lucia Villares, who sadly passed away this week. Dr Villares co-edited Graciliano Ramos and the Making of Modern Brazil: Memory, Politics and Identities, a significant collection of essays in our Iberian and Latin American Studies series, which examines the
Meic Stephens, who passed away this week, made a huge and vital contribution to the development of the University of Wales Press as both an author and an editor. Along with R. Brinley Jones, he established the pioneering series ‘Writers of Wales’ in 1970, which he edited for over forty years – a period that
The University of Wales Press would like to congratulate Professor M. Wynn Thomas on winning the 2018 Wales Book of the Year Award for Creative Non-Fiction with his book, All That Is Wales: The Collected Essays of M. Wynn Thomas. The Wales Book of the Year Award is presented annually to the best Welsh-language and
Diana Wallace introduces her new book in the Writers of Wales series, Christopher Meredith. The inspiration for this book came out of a kind of joke against myself. Talking to Professor Jane Aaron, one of the editors of the Writers of Wales series, I remarked that it was surely high time for a volume in
Evan T. Jones introduces the new edited volume, The World of the Newport Medieval Ship: Trade, Politics and Shipping in the Mid-Fifteenth Century. Ships have always played a prominent role in the popular imagination, and not just of seafaring communities. From the Ancient world to modern times, ships were the largest, most expensive and most
Lisa Lewis introduces Performing Wales: People: Memory and Place. Performing Wales: People, Memory and Place, begins from the premise that culture can be analysed in terms of performance, and focuses on four distinct areas of Welsh culture – Museum, Heritage, Festival and Theatre – in which performance helps to sustain specific relationships between people, memory
Patrick B. Sharp introduces Darwinian Feminism and Early Science Fiction: Angels, Amazons, and Women. Despite all the work that has been done on women’s SF over the past two decades, I still hear people at conferences state with confidence that women didn’t publish – or were excluded from publishing – in SF magazines before the Second World
On the fiftieth anniversary of May ’68, Chris Reynolds introduces his book Memories of May ’68: France’s Convenient Consensus. The commemorative fervour currently sweeping France on the topic of mai 68 is further confirmation of the thesis set out in Memories of May ’68: France’s Convenient Consensus. In it, I outline and analyse the role the
Laura Wainwright introduces her new book, New Territories in Modernism: Anglophone Welsh Writing, 1930-1949. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Modernist writers and artists sought to represent and respond to the modern world in myriad experimental and ground-breaking ways. In recent years, Modernist studies have opened up as critics have increasingly looked beyond the
Russell Davies introduces his new book, Sex, Sects and Society: ‘Pain and Pleasure’: A Social History of Wales and the Welsh, 1870-1945 Despite the hardship and hardscrabble existences endured by many, over the period 1870–1945 the life expectancy of the Welsh people doubled. The fact that death had lost the frightening immanency, which it had in
Rhianon Washington introduces The Mentor’s Companion: A Guide to Good Mentoring Practice. ‘I am here for you, I believe in you, I will not let you fail. You have the power.’ [1] Pascarelli’s powerful tenet was one of the earliest influences that inspired me to practise, study and research mentoring. I came to mentoring late, having
Emily Lyle introduces her new collection, Celtic Myth in the 21st Century: The Gods and their Stories in a Global Perspective. Antlered humans, dragons, princesses, one-eyed giants, enchanted islands, transformations, transcendent states: this is part of the stuff of Celtic myth explored in this book by experts in the field. The story-making is evident and, in
Patricia Skinner introduces her new collection, The Welsh and the Medieval World: Travel, Migration and Exile. The modern era has seen extensive studies of Welsh migration to all parts of the globe as well as immigration to Wales from Europe and beyond,[1] but these migrant histories have a long prehistory that is rather less well-known. Wales
The editors of Kant’s Doctrine of Right in the 21st Century introduce their new collection. For a long time, Kant’s Doctrine of Right languished in relative neglect, even among Kantians. The work was best known for its uncompromising views on punishment and revolution, and for a seemingly limited and not particularly original emphasis on private property. Kant’s more
For Women’s History Month, Manon Ceridwen James introduces her new book Women, Identity and Religion in Wales: Theology, Poetry, Story. Why did the women I worked with lack confidence? Why did I lack confidence? These were questions that intrigued me as I went about my work as a parish priest and diocesan officer within the Church
An advantage of working at a relatively small university is that most of one’s daily interactions are interdisciplinary. Some years ago, I was having lunch at the campus cafeteria with David Crawford, an economic anthropologist. Taking a break from the usual faculty pastime of griping about the administration, David asked me what I was working
We’re hitting the ground running in 2018 with several exciting releases over the next few weeks, including an important collection of essays on Gerald of Wales, a fresh examination of Mary Shelley’s work within the Gothic tradition, and a major study on gift theory in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. If you would like to pre-order any
by Anya Heise-von der Lippe, editor of Posthuman Gothic The Posthuman Gothic is concerned with humanity’s widespread sense of unease concerning our biomedical and technological involvements and their capacity to change our perceptions of what it means to be human. It revolves around our fear of becoming ‘other’,[1] of losing ourselves in a multitude of corporeal
It’s that time of the year again! Not just Halloween, but arguably even more exciting: we are calling out for proposals for the British Spanish Society Prize, sponsored by the University of Wales Press and our Iberian and Latin American Studies Series. The prize will be £250, offered by the British Spanish Society, and books
For International Archaeology Day, Peter James introduces his upcoming book Saving the Pyramids: Modern Engineering and Egypt’s Ancient Monuments, to be published in 2018 by University of Wales Press. As MD of Cintec International, Peter James has worked on projects around the globe, strengthening and restoring historically significant structures from Windsor Castle to the parliament buildings
by A.D. Carr, author of The Gentry of North Wales in the Later Middle Ages In the later Middle Ages, landownership in Wales was transformed from a pattern based on the rights and interests of the kindred to one of individual proprietorship. This was the background to the emergence of the landed gentry. The present study
by Cai Parry-Jones, author of The Jews of Wales: A History As a non-Jewish Welshman I’ve often been asked by people why I decided to embark on a research project on the history of Welsh Jewry. ‘Surely, you must have some Jewish ancestry? No? So why the interest?’ The answer is simple – I am
The University of Wales Press contributes to a publication from an active NASA mission which highlights the Welsh language With artistic shots of actively eroding slopes, impact craters, strange polar landscapes, avalanches, and spectacular descent pictures of probes like the Phoenix Lander and the Mars Science Laboratory, a new publication by the University of Arizona
by Dr Robert McKay and Dr John Miller, editors of Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic The werewolf is the least tracked of the three cardinal species of monster, overshadowed in the moonlight by vampires and the recent zombie hordes. We have learned that such figures offer (as David Punter writes of the Gothic) ‘a very
The University of Wales Press once again attended the National Eisteddfod – this year held in Anglesey from the 4th to the 12th August. The Press set up shop in the University of Wales tent, with hundreds of Welsh and English-language books on offer. Many of our authors were also in attendance, giving a fascinating
The Gothic and the Carnivalesque in American Culture (Gothic Literary Studies) by Dr Timothy Jones has been announced as co-winner of the prestigious Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize – an international prize for gothic criticism. Announced as part of the International Gothic Association’s (IGA) biannual conference in Mexico, the book, which is published by the University
By Hywel Wyn Owen, co-author of Place Names of Flintshire Flintshire is one of the most fascinating counties in Wales in terms of history, and almost all its historical developments are reflected in its place-names – Alun, Clwyd and Elwy are very old Brythonic river names; Prestatyn, Rhuddlan and Hawarden were recorded in the Domesday
by Simon Brooks, author of Why Wales Never Was In When Was Wales? Gwyn Alf Williams claims that Wales is remade by the Welsh from generation to generation, ‘if they want to’. Wales is thus always ‘now’; despite societal, cultural and linguistic change, Wales is always ‘here’. Why Wales Never Was is in broad agreement,
by Geraldine Lublin, author of Memoir and Identity in Welsh Patagonia: Voices from a Settler Community in Argentina In a recent interview with BBC Radio Cymru, I was asked if the Welsh should apologise to Patagonia’s indigenous peoples for taking their land. It is an interesting and complex question to which I was unable to respond
by Steve Clarke, author of Community Organization and Development: from its history towards a model for the future A friend of mine said recently that, although there were probably more people in the development business today than previously, no-one now mentioned the words ‘community development’ in their analysis of an issue or approach to a problem.
The Association for Welsh Writing in English conference, Gregynog, 12-14 May 2017 by Llion Wigley, Commissioning Editor for Welsh Language and Topics The Association of Welsh Writing in English annual conference is always a highlight of the academic calendar in Wales, more so than ever this year as the theme was multi-disciplinarity. This opened up what
by M. Wynn Thomas, author of All That Is Wales: The Collected Essays of M. Wynn Thomas I still remember a car journey I made a quarter of century ago. Starting from Cardiff I skirted post-industrial Merthyr, marvelled at the bare majesty of the Beacons, wound my way through the verdant mid-Wales countryside, and ended in
by Marianne E. Kalinke, author of Stories Set Forth with Fair Words: The Evolution of Medieval Romance in Iceland Iceland’s unique contribution to medieval literature are the sagas, the thirteenth-century epics that fuse history and legend in a vernacular prose form. Concurrently, translations of more or less contemporary French literature, of courtly lays and romances and
by Professor Ruth Finnegan, author of Entrancement: The consciousness of dreaming, music and the world, an edited volume on the study of imagination, death and shared consciousness. Dr Finnegan was the recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Rivers Memorial Medal in 2016. This book should never have been written. Let alone published. Well, so a
The University of Wales is delighted to announce that Natalie Williams has been appointed as the new Director of the University of Wales Press. Born and bred in Cardiff, Natalie brings a great understanding of the publishing world to the role. Achieving a BA (Hons) in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Southampton,
by Professor Diana Wallace, author of Female Gothic Histories Women’s historical fiction tends to attract a bad press. One very well-known television historian has rather sneeringly labelled it ‘history as Mills and Boon’. Yet because women have traditionally been excluded from mainstream history – both as subjects and as writers – they have very often
by Dr Leon Gooberman, author of From Depression to Devolution: Economy and Government in Wales, 1934-2006 From Depression to Devolution: Economy and Government in Wales, 1934-2006 emerged from my interest in the ever-changing relationships between business and the state, and how these impacted on the economy of Wales. While the published history of Wales is
To celebrate Academic Book Week we’ve taken 20% off all our 2016 titles – just use the code ABW17 on our website until the end of January. Last year featured another diverse list, including books on a range of academic and popular subjects. Here’s a small selection, with many more available across the site: Roald
by Professor Iwan Rhys Morus, author of William Robert Grove: Victorian Gentleman of Science On 22 October 1842 the Swansea-born natural philosopher William Robert Grove sent a letter to Michael Faraday describing a new philosophical toy he’d been playing with in his laboratory at the London Institution. Grove called this experimental curiosity the gas battery.
On this grey January afternoon, Academic Book Week is sure to lift us out of the dark days of winter. To pause to take stock, consider, and celebrate “what we do” all too often gets overlooked in the day to day graft by authors and publishers alike to write, publish and disseminate academic work. From
