Welsh Journals

A Relation of Ghosts and Apparitions in Wales, 1767. A Lost First Edition. By E. I. WILLIAMS. Introduction. The first mention of this book appears to be that in a review of it in the important periodical The Retrospective Review, Vol. XI, 1825. The title given is:- A Relation of Ghosts and Apparitions, which commonly appear in the Principality of Wales. By the Rev. Edmund Jones, Preacher of the Gospel in Monmouth. Bristol, 1767. Lowndes, who made much use of The Retrospective Review, copied the title for his Bibliographer's Manual, omitting the words Preacher of the Gospel in Monmouth.' The shrewd and thorough Ifano Jones accepts this edition as the first of three in the Catalogue of Printed Literature in the Welsh Department, Cardiff Library, 1898, p. 261, and in A History of Printing and Printers in Wales, 1925, p. 240; and the latest confirmation comes from Hugh Evans, Y Tylwyth Teg, 1944, p. 90. All Edmund Jones's books are rare and the one under consideration has apparently vanished completely. Wirt Sikes, in British Goblins, 1880, states that writers who have quoted the Apparitions have generally done so at second-hand, including Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, and Keightly, Fairy Mythology, and then proceeds to condemn the latter for having stated that the Apparitions appeared in the latter half of the eighteenth century,' whereas he (Sikes) knew it was first published in 1813, an edition now considered the third. Is there a copy of the 1767 edition anywhere or a description of it, apart from its title quoted above ? The writer will venture the opinion that no copy exists or ever has existed, in the hope that this will elicit more information, or better still, bring to light a copy of this assumed-lost book. The Title-page, 1767. The Retrospective Review record, with its details of date and place of printing, has a ring of authenticity about it. Edmund Jones, who