Welsh Journals

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NOT JUST ANOTHER LOCAL PRINTER AND PUBLISHER: RICHARD MASON OF TENBY (1817-81) CHRIS BAGGS On Boxing Day 1881, Richard Mason, printer and publisher of North Cliff House, Tenby, died aged sixty-four. Mason could not claim to be the first printer or publisher either in Pembrokeshire or Tenby,l but he was certainly the most prolific and most successful printer/publisher in the county during the nineteenth century.2 Despite being non-Welsh born, he merits twenty-four lines in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography,3 as well as a brief note in T. Mardy Rees's Notable Welshmen 1700-1900.4 Some two years after Mason's death a laudatory article appeared in the periodical Red Dragon entitled 'Notable Men of Wales: Richard Mason and the Literature of his Time'.5 Written by the journal's editor, Charles Wilkins, the article contained the following undated tribute from Connop Thirlwall (Bishop of St. David's between 1840 and 1874): What you have done for Welsh Literature, Mr. Mason, will form part of the future history of Wales. This essay will examine the nature of Mason's publishing activities up to his death in 1881 and endeavour to uncover the justification for such an extravagant claim.