Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

THE PRINTING OF WELSH BOOKS IN THE UNITED STATES AN INTRODUCTORY survey1 When I received the invitation of the Welsh Bibliographical Society to address its Annual General Meeting in 1976 I took advantage of the opportunity to return to an area of study that had captured my attention, momentarily, during my student days. During one of the many pleasant hours of searching in the National Library of Wales I came across a corpus of letters2 between T. J. Griffiths of Utica, New York and Samuel Roberts, devoted entirely to matters related to the publication of S. R.'s works in the United States, but providing a remarkable insight into publishing practices in the Welsh language in the United States during the nineteenth century, into the problems of publishing in Welsh, into the life of T. J. Griffiths, and incidentally into the rather more abrasive side of that remarkable personality, S.R. Yet, the more involved I became with the subject during the preparation of this paper, the more I realised that anything I could say about the subject would be rather inadequate. Despite the useful work undertaken by Henry Blackwell despite the rich resources of the National Library and its collection of Welsh Americana, I cannot help feeling that the picture presented here is merely half a picture since it lacks reference to materials and resources that are available in the United States. Some of these I know about but of the vast majority I am wholly ignorant. I also realised that I was following in the footsteps of some remarkable bibliographers, Blackwell and Bob Owen in particular. As a rather green bibliographer I do not feel at home in such company! Furthermore I soon realised that I had bitten off more than I could chew, hence the decision to restrict my particular study to books [NLW: National Library of Wales MSS; NLW Jnl: National Library of Wales Journal] 1. An extended version of an address given to the Annual General Meeting of the Welsh Bibliographical Society in Cardigan, 1976. The address was given in Welsh and this is a translation of the greater part of the extended version. Where the original material quoted from sources is in Welsh I have provided a translation, denoted thus [ ]. 2. NLW 3265 D for the most part the letters are between Roberts and Griffiths, but some are from other correspondents. 3. BLACKWELL, Henry A Bibliography of Welsh Americana. 2nd edition, Aberystwyth 1977. I wish to note my indebtedness to a number of friends at the National Library of Wales who drew my attention to certain items and for allowing me to see the proofs of the 2nd edition of the Bibliography of Welsh Americana before it was published in 1977. All page references in these Notes and References are to the 2nd edition.