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Abstract
This article explores examples of published and unpublished works by three women writers (Hester Thrale Piozzi, Mary Morgan and Elizabeth Isabella Spence) which encompass travels and tours in north and south Wales as well as spanning what might be termed pre-Romantic and Romantic eras of travel writing from the mid-1770s to the early 1800s. These accounts span a significant period in the history of travel writing and of shifting perceptions of Wales from a backward and uncivilised land to a place venerated for its ancient bardic culture and sublime landscapes. The present essay thus attempts to illustrate and explore not only the individual and varied modes of travel writing adopted by women writers but also the changes in women's representations of Wales in this key historical period, from a relatively obscure destination in the 1770s to a recognisable tourist attraction by 1809.
Funding
The research for this article was funded by the British Academy [grant number 52983].
Notes
1. For the Scottish context see, for example, Glendening (Citation1997) and Hagglund (Citation2010).
2. I refer to the writer as Piozzi throughout.
3. While travelling in Wales, Piozzi wrote her private account of the journey which remained unpublished in her lifetime. The modern edition I have used and to which page references refer is “Journal of a Tour in Wales with Dr. Johnson” (1995), referenced in the article as Tour in Wales. See also Broadley (ed.) (1910) and “Journey to the North of England and parts of Scotland, Wales etc. (1789)”, John Rylands Library MS 623.
4. For a recent discussion see Mee (Citation2013). Unfortunately this chapter appeared too late to be considered in this article.
5. Philip Yorke of Erthig published two tracts on Welsh genealogy, in 1795: Tracts of Powys and Third Royal Tribe of North Wales. In 1799, they were combined and expanded into Royal Tribes of Wales. On page 94 of that volume occurs the following note on Catherine of Berayne: “Catherine's second husband was Sir Richard Clough; by him she had two daughters; one married to Wynne of Melai; the other to Salisbury of Bachegraig, whence is descended our ingenious country-woman, Mrs. Piozzi” (1942, vol. 2, 946, Note 1).
6. She was actually born in Bodfel.
7. Zaring (Citation1977, 411) mentions the perception of south Wales as “well-wooded country” even when travellers were faced with clear evidence of intensive arable farming. Thus, Piozzi would perhaps have been expecting to find similar terrain in north Wales. Such expectations may have heightened her sense of disappointment.
8. She is referring to the church of Corpus Christi at Tremeirchion where she was buried (Bristow 1995, 132, Note 32).
9. Piozzi wrote a poem on Bodfel Hall, “Lines on Bodfel Hall, the Birthplace of Mrs. H. L. Piozzi” which was published in the periodical the Cambrian Register for 1818 (see Aaron Citation2007, 58).
10. See also Lichtenwalner (Citation2008), Chapter 4 “Cultural Tourism: Identity as Local Color”.
11. See Prescott (Citation2008), especially Chapter 3. See also Watson (Citation2003).
12. All the classical allusions draw on the incarceration of women (Danae in a tower at the behest of her father) or their sufferings at sea (Andromeda chained to a rock; Alcyone's husband Ceyx was drowned).
13. Morgan (Citation1795) has a footnote here which reproduces and references Evans's explanatory notes to his selection of poems in Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards, Translated into English (London, 1764):
Taliesin was the most famous among the Welsh bards. He was found by some fishermen on a weir in a coracle, wrapped up in a leathern bag. They brought him to prince Elphin, who had him taken care of and educated. (317)
14. Lichtenwalner (Citation2008, 96–97) points to an episode in Henry Penruddocke Wyndham's A Gentleman's Tour Through Monmouthshire and Wales, in the months of June and July, 1774 when the author hears a “harper” play at an inn in Conway and has his expectations fulfilled, unlike Morgan. Although Wyndham admits that this is the only “blind harper” he has heard “in the principality”, nevertheless he emphasises the perceived authenticity of the experience as “both the instrument and voice were perfectly pleasing, and the music being truly Welsh, was plaintive and melancholy” (161).
15. See also Spence's (Citation1809, vol. 2, 106–107) disappointed account of a “harper” in Swansea in the early nineteenth century, as well as Kinsley's discussion of this episode (2008, 137).
16. The influence of Evans's translations on the work of women writers from Wales is a fascinating topic. See my discussion of the eighteenth-century poet Anne Penny's use of Evans's translations (Prescott Citation2010).
17. For a recent essay on Mary Morgan see Kinsley (Citation2012).
18. Another eighteenth-century woman writer, Jane Brereton (1685–1740) also writes about Merlin. See Chapter 2 of Prescott (Citation2008).
19. This appears here to be Morgan's own versification of Evans's English prose translation.
20. The volume is heavily indebted to Gray and includes a sequence of sonnets on various symbolically resonant Welsh locations, for example: “On Castle Dinas Bran” (Sonnet XI), “Skirid, a Hill near Abergavenny” (Sonnet XII) and “On Crossing the Anglesey Streight to Bangor, at Midnight” (Sonnet XIII).