Welsh Journals

preservation, and its impact on community relations, but it would have been even better had the work of David Jones been consulted. This is a splendid study, balanced, sensitive, and nicely setting local events and trends within the wider Welsh and British context. Con- temporary portraits, photographs and maps all contribute to an attractive-and reasonably priced-volume. DAVID W.HOWELL Swansea Iatth CARREG Fy AELWYD: iatth A CHYMUNED YN Y BEDWAREDD GANRIF AR BYMTHEG [Hanes Cymdeithasol yr Iaith Gymraeg]. Golygwyd gan Geraint H. Jenkins. Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, Caerdydd 1998. Tt. xvi, 427, 36 ffigur a map. £ 15.99. [Also in English, entitled Language and Community in the Nineteenth Century.] This is the third volume in a series detailing the fortunes of the Welsh language since the later Middle Ages. In contrast to the first volume which was thematic in its approach, and the collection of statistical data by Dr Dot Jones in the second, this account of the Welsh language during the nineteenth century deals with it by district or region. There are gaps in the account, unfortunately, such as the enforced omission of Gwynedd and the overlooking of one or two border areas such as Kilvert country. To a degree, the volume reflects current patterns of research into Welsh society and culture, the essays reinforcing their authors' conclusion published elsewhere. In the main, most of the contributors concentrate on the mid- and later century, partly because there are two rich, though flawed, sources available from which they can glean significant detail. The 1847 education reports and the 1891 population census act as nodal points around which the authors weave their interpretations of language shift and erosion. Among the essays which pay more than a passing regard for the earlier part of the century, when all the preconceptions about the Welsh language were really already being set, are David Llewelyn Jones's quite lively account of Montgomeryshire and Sian Rhiannon Williams's masterly discussion of western Monmouthshire. The census and education sources certainly provide important statistical detail which most of the writers reproduce to some degree or other. A marked contrast in approach emerges, however, between the social historians such as Williams or Jones, who also exploit qualitative informa- tion, and the historical geographers like W. T. R. Pryce or P. N. Jones who