Welsh Journals

His works have been translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Welsh. They were published also and obtained an extensive circulation in the United States. The study of Owenism is most intense in Scandinavia, Germany, Russia, and Japan, and the most representative collections of Owenite literature, excepting that in the National Library of Wales, are found in countries where the regulation and control of wealth are most insistent. In Europe the finest collection of Owenite literature is to be found in Stockholm. There are eleven extensive collections in Japan, six of them in university libraries, including the Imperial University of Tokio. Two bibliographies of Robert Owen, by Professor Kitano and Goto respectively, have been published in Japanese. David Williams, Cardiff, considers that Robert Owen has probably had more influence on the history of the world in general than any other Welshman who has ever lived. WM. WILLIAMS. BIBLIOTHECA CELTICA. We are grateful to Professor John J. Parry, of the University of Illinois, U.S.A., for his review of Bibliotheca Celtica in the January (1940) number of the Journal of English and Germanic Philology. Professor Parry is especially concerned with the section which lists works on Arthurian romance, and his remarks, coming from one who is an expert in medieval romance and has himself published several bibliographies of Arthurian critical literature, deserve, as they are having, our closest attention. In the introductory remarks to the Arthurian section we invited criticism of the scheme of classification there adopted, and Professor Parry has been good enough to respond to this invitation. Unfortunately, his opinion, based on his own experience and that of collaborators, is that a classified bibliography of Arthurian literature is so much beset with difficulties as to be almost impracticable. In spite of those difficulties, however, we remain convinced that some system of classification is necessary in Arthurian biblio- graphy. Arthurian literature touches the interests of many classes of students. From the point of view of language alone, for example, there are specialists in English, French, or German, not to mention other languages, whose concern will often be limited to the redactions of Arthurian legend in one or other of those languages. This consideration was kept in view in a useful compilation published in 1933 by the Newberry Library, Chicago, under the title, The Arthurian Legend: a check list of books in the Newberry Library, compiled by J. D. Harding. In this work Arthurian literature is arranged in two classes, (a) Texts, arranged by language, and (b) Critical works. Such an arrangement of texts is practicable and useful, but for critical works on any one of these texts the student has to search through a long list arranged alphabetically by authors' names. These critical works could not, as a rule, have been arranged on the same basis as the texts, for they often discuss not a particular redaction but a theme common to several, and that is why in Bibliotheca Celtica the theme rather than the language was taken as the basis of classi- fication. It must be borne in mind, too, that the Arthurian literature in the National Library of Wales, where the Library of Congress classification scheme is in use, is already in a classified arrangement on the shelves. With the chronicle sources in class D (History), the romance proper spreads through PA (Medieval Latin), PB (Celtic Literature), and so on to PT (Teutonic and Scandinavian). I David Williams History of Wales, 1485-1931 (London, 1934).