Brynley Roberts (1931-2023)

Brynley Francis Roberts was born in 1931 in Aberdâr to parents from North Wales. His father had worked as a printer in Caernarfon and continued his career in Aberdâr; this doubtless led to Bryn’s interest in the history of printing, evidenced by his lecture on ‘Aberdare printing’ to the Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group in 1977. Although Welsh was not the primary language of his home in an area which was becoming rapidly Anglicized – Bryn said that he spoke ‘Cymraeg y capel’ (chapel Welsh) – there were Welsh as well as English books there in which he took an interest and he went on to study Welsh at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and in addition sat a Latin paper in his finals, graduating with first class honours in 1951. As part of his National Service he had the opportunity to learn Russian; his willingness to tackle languages was to prove an advantage to him throughout his academic career.

He might well have chosen to become a librarian had the College of Librarianship Wales existed at that time. Medieval Welsh prose, however, became his field of research. He gained an MA in 1954 for a textual and linguistic study of the Welsh translation of a Latin text which was published as Gwassanaeth Meir (1961). His doctorate (1969) was for a textual study of the three earliest Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, together with a critical ‘golygiad’ (‘edition’) of the text of Peniarth 44. He retained his interest in this field throughout the years, publishing part of his Ph. D. thesis as Brut y Brenhinedd Llanstephan MS. 1 Version in 1971. This was primarily intended for students new to the study of Middle Welsh who had not had the advantage of mynd trwy’r felin (going through the mill) of a Welsh department as an undergraduate. In the same Medieval and Modern Welsh Series of texts of the Dublin Institute he published two of the tales of the Mabinogion, Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys (1973) and Breuddwyd Maxen Wledig (2005).

Bryn was appointed lecturer in the Welsh department of UCW, Aberystwyth, in 1957. Towards the end of the 1960s he developed an interest in the polymath and pioneer of Celtic studies Edward Lhwyd (c.1660-1709). The Sir John Rhys fellowship at Jesus College for 1973-4 enabled him to study Lhwyd’s extensive correspondence preserved in the Bodleian Library, research for which his skill in Latin again proved helpful. Lhwyd was the subject of his 1984 lecture to Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group, ‘Mr Lhwyd’s moving library’. Not the least of Bryn’s contributions is the volume he and Dewi W. Evans produced, Edward Lhwyd Archæologia Britannica Texts and Translations (2009), which makes a range of important texts in Latin and various Celtic languages available to a wider readership.

Bryn was appointed to the chair of Welsh in Swansea in 1978, taking as the subject of his inaugural lecture Brut Tysilio, a late Welsh version of the Historia Regum Britanniae. There he chaired the Library Committee of the College.

Bryn took the opportunity to return to Aberystwyth as Librarian of the National Library of Wales in 1985, where his calm decision making was valued. His success as Librarian can be judged by the increase in the number of staff, the building of a new book stack, and the removal of restrictions on the books received by the Library under copyright. As Librarian he played a leading role in the profession in Wales, the UK, and internationally. He was awarded an honorary Fellowship of the Library Association, an honour of which he was proud. At a time when the history of the book was gaining in prominence as a field of study, Philip Henry Jones and Eiluned Rees, dismayed by the excessive focus on London in the plan for a UK study, approached Bryn with their plan for A Nation and its Books: a history of the book in Wales. Bryn immediately assured them that the Library would publish the volume, which appeared in 1998 and quickly sold out.

After his retirement in 1994, Bryn, who was awarded an honorary D. Litt. in 1996, survived a serious illness and returned with renewed vigour to his study of Edward Lhwyd. He contributed his transcriptions of correspondence to Early Modern Letters Online (EMLO): http://emlo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/ created by the Cultures of Learning project. The culmination of his work on Lhwyd was the biography Edward Lhwyd c.1660-1709, Naturalist, Antiquary, Philologist, which appeared in 2022. His intention was that it should provide a reliable chronology of Lhwyd’s life and work to facilitate research in a number of fields.

In addition to publishing, editing and co-editing too many works to enumerate here, notably Gerald of Wales (1982), Itinerary of Wales (1989) and The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature (1991), he edited  the quarterly  published by the Presbyterian Church of Wales, Y Traethodydd (1999-2016). Bryn served in a variety of other roles as he was motivated by a sense of duty to the wider community and also to his denomination, to the detriment, it could be said, of his projected magnum opus on the Welsh versions of Historia Regum Britanniae.  These included editing the quarterly periodical published by the Presbyterian Church Y Traethodydd, serving as president of Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group 1986-7, and chairman of Cymdeithas Bob Owen, the Welsh-language society of collectors, primarily of books, the subject of another of his lectures to this Group, ‘Some Welsh collectors and their books’ (1981). He remained an active member of Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group until overcome by illness. He was an excellent and engagingly modest public speaker on a variety of subjects, which he pursued with scholarly rigour; a lecture in Welsh ‘Ar drywydd Edward Lhwyd’ (On the trail of Edward Lhwyd), can be seen seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfBeTOPK3cc

He was supported in his long working days by his wife Rhiannon, whom he met at school and who survives him along with their sons Rolant and Maredudd.

Mary Burdett-Jones