Welsh Writing in English

Now entering its second decade of publication,  Welsh Writing in English: A Yearbook of Critical Essays is the only academic journal devoted solely to the critical study of the English-language literature of Wales. The Yearbook seeks to cover the whole chronological sweep of Welsh writing in English, and essays published to date include papers ranging from discussion of the earliest Welsh literature written in English--Ieuan ab Hywel Swrdwal in the fifteenth century--to contemporary writers like Gillian Clarke, Niall Griffiths and Christopher Meredith.  Emphasis is, though, on the writing of the twentieth century and we have published important new essays on such major figures as Dylan Thomas, Glyn Jones, Vernon Watkins, Alun Lewis and  R.S. Thomas.


The Yearbook consists of new (peer-reviewed) essays by critics in universities in Wales and the U.K. as a whole, as well as America and beyond,  and, while the ultimate criterion is always quality,  the journal seeks to publish work both by established scholars in the field and by young researchers publishing the results of recent new work. As well as some eight full-length articles in each volume, the journal also publishes shorter factual pieces--new discoveries, new manuscripts, etc.--in a “Notes” section, while the occasional “Forum” section seeks to stimulate lively  critical debate arising from published papers.  Each issue also contains an annual bibliography of new critical material which has appeared during the previous year.


In its ten years of publication the Yearbook has become a benchmark for discussion of Wales’s English-language literature, as well as for the exploration of the links between  the two literatures of Wales.  A number of the essays first  published in the Yearbook are already widely cited as key discussions of their subject and a number have been reprinted.


The Yearbook is a journal which aims to be lively, original, challenging,  controversial  and to be appeal  not just to specialists but to be accessible to the interested general reader.

Tony Brown is Reader in English and co-director of the R. S. Thomas Study Centre at the University of Wales, Bangor.

Emeritus professor at the University of South Wales, Jane Aaron is the author of six books, including Nineteenth-Century Women’s Writing in Wales and Welsh Gothic.