Welsh Journals

THE GOTHIC NOVEL IN WALES (1790-1820) In their efforts to escape the regular, the practical, and the local phenomena of everyday life, the Gothic novelists, in common with other writers of the late eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries turned their attentions to the remote, both in time and place The same urge that motivated the writers of oriental tales and travel books spurred on Gothic writers in this period to find for their works a locale in keeping with the bizarre nature of their products. A great number of Gothic novels were set not only in the Romance countries of the continent, but even in Scotland and Ireland.1 Public interest was focused upon these areas, and the new romantic spirit of literature found in them a fertile source of fresh material. Wales too became associated with the revival of the Celtic taste in literature. Nearly a hundred years before Borrow penned his celebrated work on Wales, Thomas Pennant was writing with elegance and enthusiasm about his native country,2 and in the thirty year period between 1790 and 1820 one writer has discovered no less than sixty-seven travel books.3 Wales was indeed a mine of interesting information for a public made suddenly aware of the fascination of antiquities and unusual customs. Writers on Wales made much of its history, its geography, its scenic beauties, the character of its people, even its geology. As one writer put it, Wales was a country in which 'every ride and walk is strewed with vestiges of ancient warfare, or curious arts'. 4 Moreover, as Matthew Arnold was later at pains to indicate, the Celtic temperament was admirably suited to figure in and to appreciate the works of the Gothic novelists.5 The Character of the Welsh was, through English eyes at least, seen as 'warm, quick, impatient of controul, and addicted to revenged It had 'sentiment as its main basis, with love of beauty, charm, and spirituality for its excellence, ineffectualness and self-will for its defect'7 and, perhaps more important, was signalised by a 'passionate, turbulent, indomitable reaction against the despotism of fact'.8 That Anglo-Welsh writing was very much alive at this time cannot be disputed and from the interest in Wales evinced among 1 Thus we find a great number of titles like The Romance of the Hebrides (1809), The Scottish Legend, or The Isle of St. Clothair (1802). The Prophecy of Duncannon (1824), The Fays of Loch Lomond (1824), The Irish Chieftain and His Family (1809), The Irish Guardian (1809) etc. 2 Tours in Wales (1778-1781). W. J. Hughes-Wales and the Welsh in English Literature. Wrexham: Hughes, 1924, pp. 194-199. Rev. J. Evans-Letters Written during a Tour through South Wales. London; Baldwin, 1804. 5 Matthew Arnold-The Study of Celtic Literature. London: Smith, Elder, 1867. Evans, op. cit. p. 436. 7 Arnold. op. cit. p. 115. 8 ibid. pp. 155-156.