Jane Williams (Ysgafell)

(Paperback)

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Description

Jane Williams (Ysgafell) was a writer with a long and varied list of publications: poetry, fiction, a riposte to the 1847 Blue Books, the autobiography of Betsi Cadwaladr, a history of Wales, a biography of the historian and patriot Carnhuanawc, and a history of womens writing in English. In her writing and her life she crossed and re-crossed boundariesnational, social, literary, linguistic, and culturaland carved out her own path. As a nineteenth-century woman whose writing career spanned fifty years and many genres, including serious nonfiction and texts in English on Wales and Welsh matters, Williams is unique. This book is the first full-length study of her life and work, built on detailed original research from which Gwyneth Tyson Roberts has drawn a picture of a remarkable and impressive woman writer.

Reviews

"This elegantly written study is as engrossing as it is revealing of the life and impressive work of a sadly neglected woman writer of some importance in Welsh cultural history. Williams excelled as a redoubtable polemicist, a sophisticated biographer, a pioneering historian and a cunning ghost writer of Betsi Cadwaladrs colorful memoirs." -- M. Wynn Thomas, Swansea University
"Ysgafell has at last been granted what she deserves in this finely detailed and highly readable critical biography, which rescues from oblivion an accomplished and versatile writer, and rediscovers for a new generation of readers a markedly intelligent and unconventional Welsh Victorian." -- Jane Aaron, University of South Wales

Author Bio

Gwyneth Tyson Roberts is an independent scholar