Welsh Journals

amassed a large collection of such material, which he arranged and published in two volumes in 1767 and 1780. (A second edition of the second volume was printed by H. Lewis at Newport in 1831.) Although unappreciated in its own time, the value of Edmund Jones's work is unquestionable. His main intention was to provide conclusive evidence of the afterlife in a period when its previously assumed existence was being undermined by the advance of scepticism. But he also considered his labour as a providential response to the call of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion for a printed account of apparitions in Wales, and indeed, the range and detail of his work is unequalled by any other in its field. In addition to enhancing our understanding of the conservative response to ideas that shaped the outlook of modern society in the Western World, Jones's work therefore offers a rare insight into the folklore of eighteenth-century Wales. This new edition contains Jones's second volume on the topic, A Relation of Apparitions of Spirits, in the Principality of Wales. It also includes parts of his first volume, of which there are no extant copies, and extracts from a study of his native parish of Aberystruth, Monmouthshire. These are preceded by an engaging introduction by John Harvey, who provides the background to Jones's work and places it within a broader context by discussing examples of apparitions in other seventeenth and eighteenth-century works and images. Together with the use of vivid and colourful illustrations, this makes the new edition a vast improvement on the facsimile version of the 1813 edition of A Relation of Apparitions published in 1988 (This was limited to 500 copies and published by D. Brown & Sons, Cowbridge and Bridgend). Also, the improved orthography of this latest edition should give a wider appeal to the unique and interesting work of Edmund Jones, and hopefully lead to further research into an aspect of Welsh history that has thus far received scant attention. Dafydd Tudur Bangor Boyd Stanley Schlenther and Eryn Mant White, Calendar of the Trevecka Letters (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2003), ISBN 1-86225-039-1, pp. xii + 528. £ 29.95 Within eighteen months of his conversion experience, Howell Harris, the founder of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism, was aware that he was already being