Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

Margiad Evans (1909-58) and Dorothy Edwards (1903-34), will enhance the early list and the mix of rural and urban will also continue with Geraint Goodwin (1903-41) and Alun Richards (1929-2004). Thinking of these writers, and of the multifarious talents and interests they deployed, has led me to think, too, that neither the essay form or memoir or autobiography proper should be neglected as they are in the case of some of our so- called minor writers or those whose major chosen form was not prose fiction. Expect surprises! An early one will be an Anthology of Sports Writing (or rather Sports Literature, for it really is that good) about Wales to be edited by Professor Gareth Williams which will take its material from poetry as well as newspapers, from novels as well as articles, from drama as well as diaries. Wait and see. And if we need that, for sport, to capture the detail of lives lived and enjoyed then, I suspect, we will require it for politics and for landscape, for work, for the soul as well as the body ofWales. If I have a single wish for the 'Library of Wales', it would be that everyone somewhere in Wales will find the filaments of their ongoing lives, at odd times and in their own places, in its pages. If I can have a second it would be that we recognize and learn from the diversity of life experience that the 'Library of Wales' will demonstrate. A third, let me be greedy, is for the passing on of all those words, by gift of hand and word of mouth, to others and especially to the coming generations. It is, after all, a heritage in common. We can waste it or we can benefit from it. Of one thing, wish-fulfilment and even bare necessity apart, I am utterly sure, we cannot, and we certainly should not, ignore it. In the books of the 'Library of Wales' one of the most vital aspects of the humanity of Wales will be kept safe and made visible in and beyond our borders. I am more than proud to be the Series Editor of the 'Library ofWales'. I am trembling, again, with the excitement of self-discovery and the anticipation of enlightemnent.