Welsh Journals

described as a 'Great Reformer' by some who had heard him preach. Though he had already begun to keep a Diary in which he recorded his thoughts and actions, the realization that he was being hailed as a significant, possibly historical, figure served only to bolster his lofty image of himself and to persuade him even further that he was an important man in Wales. That being the case, there was a need for him to safeguard for posterity any material that might prove useful in portraying the centrality of his role in the eighteenth century revival, and it was for that reason that he took such care of the Diaries and letters that he wrote, and of the correspondence he received from his contemporaries. The 'Trevecka Collection,' as it is known, is a considerable one, consisting of close to 300 Diaries and over 3000 letters and other documents. For the historian, the first challenge in using it as a source for research material is to access the information it contains, for there is much that militates against any notion there might be of 'freedom of information'. It is still covered by the embargo imposed by Presbyterian Church of Wales in the early 1930s, it is written, for the most part, in the notoriously difficult hand of Howell Harris and, at first sight, it seems far too overwhelming a task for any individual to undertake. Though a good source in which to delve, it is true to say that many have seen their dreams shipwrecked upon it. It is for that reason that Boyd Stanley Schlenther and Eryn Mant White are to be congratulated and thanked for undertaking the task of preparing a Calendar of the letters. In the past, the only aids available to researchers in their attempts to obtain an overview of the manuscripts were Tom Beynon's three volumes of transcripts from the Diaries, John Thickens's volume of transcripts translated into Welsh, copies of the first 700 or so letters published in The Journal of the Historical Society of the Presbyterian Church of Wales, Gomer M. Roberts's two volumes of Selected Trevecka Letters, M. H. Jones's posthumous volume with its incomplete list of letters and the catalogues kindly provided by the staff of the National Library of Wales. With regard to the letters, something more comprehensive was needed and this has now been provided by Schlenther and White. The 'Introduction' to the Calendar not only provides the user with the historical context of the manuscripts, but also explains the nature of the volume itself. Its first purpose is to provide a 'listing of items chronologically', which is no mean feat when it is remembered that the dates of letters can very often be misleading, elusive and/or incorrect. The second purpose is to provide an 'opening', through concise descriptions of each letter's content, which will