Reports of recent meetings
19 March 2024 Dr Gruffudd Antur
The Bibliographical Group held its AGM in the Four Seasons Hotel on Tuesday 19th March. The speaker was Dr. Gruffudd Antur, Research Fellow at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. He spoke on “New light on William Salesbury and the 1567 Welsh New Testament”. William Salesbury was born in about 1515 and spent his early years in Llanrwst. He was the author of the first Welsh dictionary as well as the first translations of the New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer into Welsh. Until recently only four surviving manuscripts had been attributed to Salesbury, although numerous mediaeval manuscripts contain annotations by him. Through his work as a research assistant on Dr. Daniel Huws’s A repertory of Welsh manuscripts and scribes, c. 800-c. 1800, published in 2022, our speaker was able to identify four further manuscripts in Salesbury’s hand, all of them early work.
There have been several attempts over the years to compile lists of surviving copies of the 1567 New Testament. Our speaker knows of 62 copies, many of which he has studied in detail. One of the copies in the National Library includes a manuscript note on the first page of the preface, indicating a disagreement between Salesbury and his fellow translator Richard Davies, Bishop of St. David’s, about the text. Our speaker has found the same note in eight other copies, all in different sixteenth-century hands. The reason for this is not clear, but it shows that there are new discoveries to be made about the first Welsh New Testament more than 450 years after its publication. After this fascinating lecture and the ensuing discussion, members enjoyed dinner with the speaker in the Four Seasons Hotel.
17 February 2024 Mr James Freemantle
At the Bibliographical Group meeting at St. Paul’s Methodist Centre on Saturday 17th February, James Freemantle spoke on “Letterpress bookmaking at the St. James Park Press”. His press in Kent (named after its original home in central London) is one of only about a dozen private presses in the United Kingdom which print books, and one of even fewer which do so using hand presses. He began by showing photographs of the primitive accommodation in which he began the press a decade ago, and the converted barn in which he now works in much greater comfort.
James told us about several of the books published by the St. James Park Press. His first book was “The twelve labours of Hercules”, for which he commissioned an engraving by the Welsh artist Harry Brockway. The text is James’s amalgamation of three contrasting translations of the Greek.
The next book was a previously unpublished text by the artist Eric Gill, who worked in Wales for several years and illustrated books for the Gregynog Press. It is bound in bamboo, with an illustration by Gill engraved on the cover. The first book James printed using hand-made paper was “King Arthur: Excalibur”. Copies of both these books have been purchased by the National Library of Wales.
His first large-scale project was “An Albion in the Antarctic”, which tells the story of “Aurora Australis”, the first book written, printed, illustrated and bound in Antarctica, during Sir Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition in 1907-9. The project took two years, with the whole text set by hand. The edition of George Orwell’s “Nineteen eighty-four” used 24 different hand-made papers, mostly from mills which have closed, to print the 24 illustrations, and has an eye, representing Big Brother, embossed on every page. The most recent publication was Orwell’s “Animal farm”, and editions of the legend of Cyclops and Euclid’s “Elements” are in preparation.
After the presentation members were able to look at copies of James’s books
15 January 2024 Dr. Paul Bryant-Quinn,
We were very grateful to Dr. Paul Bryant-Quinn, formerly of the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, for stepping in at short notice to speak on “’Things often occur where they are least expected’: Gruffydd Robert of Milan and his readers, 1567-1857”. Gruffydd Robert was a Catholic priest who emigrated to Italy in the reign of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, and wrote a grammar of the Welsh language, the first part of which was printed in Milan on St. David’s Day 1567.
Our speaker has been researching what happened subsequently to this remarkable publication. It seems likely that copies were brought to Wales by Humphrey Llwyd, who was in Milan at the time of its printing. Five copies have found their way to the National Library, with others being held in libraries in London, Cambridge, Oxford, Chicago and Yale. Some of the more notable owners whose signatures appear on these copies are the Elizabethan mathematician and astronomer Dr. John Dee, Thomas Glyn of Glynllifon, M.P. for Caernarvonshire, and Robert Wynn, who built Plas Mawr in Conwy. Gruffydd Robert’s work was also known outside Welsh-speaking circles. Sir Frederick Augusta Barnard, principal librarian to King George III, was made aware of it by the lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson, from whom the quotation in the title of the lecture comes.
The lecture was followed by a number of interesting comments and questions from the audience in the Drwm at the National Library.
7th December 2023 Professor Bill Bell
The Bibliographical Group was pleased to welcome back Professor Bill Bell, Professor of Bibliography at Cardiff University, to speak at our meeting in St. Paul’s Methodist Centre on Saturday 9th December. His talk was based on his newly-published book, “Crusoe's books: readers in the empire of print, 1800-1918”. This rich and varied lecture looked at how cultural memory in exile is dependent on reading and writing, as demonstrated by the fact that Robinson Crusoe rescued pens, ink and books when shipwrecked.
The focus of the book is on the response of readers to printed texts. Amongst the groups of readers discussed in the book are convicts transported to Australia in the nineteenth century, and explorers in Antarctica at the beginning of the twentieth century. Convicts were often assumed to be illiterate, but those from more educated backgrounds were afforded certain privileges, such as John Mitchel, an Irish nationalist, who was provided with any books he wanted, and used his reading to generate ideas. The cover of Professor Bell’s book shows Captain Scott in a hut in the Antarctic, sitting at a desk writing with shelves of books behind him. The speaker noted a similarity between this image and a Renaissance painting of Saint Jerome surrounded with the equipment of learning; its message is that civilisation continues on the edge of the known world because of reading and writing.
7th November 2023 Dr. Cathryn Charnell-White and Dr. Eryn White
The Bibliographical Group met in the National Library on Tuesday 7th November for a joint presentation by Dr. Cathryn Charnell-White of the Department of Welsh and Celtic Studies and Dr. Eryn White of the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University on “A shilling’s worth of print? Book subscription and the growth of print culture in eighteenth-century Wales”.
Until 1695 the Licensing Act confined printing in England and Wales to London, Oxford and Cambridge. The first printing press in Wales was established in Adpar near Newcastle Emlyn in 1718, followed soon afterwards by printing businesses in Carmarthen and elsewhere. However, publishing was an expensive business, and gathering subscriptions for books before publication made the venture more viable and reduced the risk of their not selling. Our speakers, together with Dr. Lloyd Roderick of the Hugh Owen Library, have been compiling an inventory of lists of subscribers printed in 18th-century books, and have so far found 120. The next stage of their project involves analysing these lists in order to trace patterns of subscription and individual subscribers, such as the number of women who appear in the lists and what sort of books they subscribed to. The lecture concluded with two case studies, Dafydd Jones of Trefriw (1708-85) and Marged Dafydd of Trawsfynydd (1700-85). The presentation was followed by a lively discussion, after which the Group entertained the speakers to dinner at the Marine Hotel.
10th October 2023 Mr. Gerald Morgan
The Bibliographical Group began its 2023-24 programme on Tuesday 10th October with a lecture in the National Library by Gerald Morgan, former Headmaster of Penweddig School, on “A forgotten treasure? The Llanbadarn Fawr missal”. The subject of the lecture is a large Catholic prayer book printed in Paris in 1531 and used in the parish church of Llanbadarn Fawr until 1549, when the Catholic liturgy was replaced by the Book of Common Prayer. Most Catholic worship books were destroyed at that time, but this one somehow survived and came into the ownership of the Vicar of Chipping Norton in 1893. He subsequently gave it to the newly disestablished Church in Wales, which transferred it to the National Library in 1920.
The volume has been repaired and given a new spine, but retains its early binding, and although the title page and a few other leaves are missing, it is still in beautiful condition. The speaker showed images of the plainsong music printed in red and black, and some of the detailed woodcut illustrations of Biblical scenes and religious traditions. He also showed some of the manuscript alterations, which include additions to the calendar of saints’ days (including Saint Padarn), deletion of references to the Pope and St. Thomas à Becket, and additional prayers, including one for Henry VIII, with his Queen’s name changed from Anne to Jane. The audience particularly liked the image of a rowing boat drawn at the foot of one page.
28th March 2023 Dr. Kevin De Ornellas
“’An extraordinary invention called the printing press ... great ... divine ... incredible ... amazing ... glory’: Shakespeare, Arnold Wesker and the Rehabilitation of Shylock through Bibliophilia”. Wesker was born in 1932 to a Jewish immigrant family in east London and in the 1950s began writing plays, which were strongly influenced by his socialist beliefs. His play “Shylock”, written in 1977, was an answer to the anti-Semitic portrayal of the character in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”. Wesker’s Shylock is a cultured man who enjoys collecting and cataloguing books and manuscripts and describes himself as “a hoarder of other men’s genius”. When he loses the court case, his punishment includes the confiscation of his books, and he emigrates to Palestine. Whereas Shakespeare’s play is a romantic comedy, Wesker’s is a tragedy.
Arnold Wesker lived in Wales for some years, and appeared at Aberystwyth Arts Centre in 2004. His play “Amazed and Surprised”, which was performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London, is set in Wales. He was knighted in 2006, and following his death in 2016 Jeremy Corbyn spoke in tribute to him in the House of Commons. This was a fascinating and stimulating lecture, exploring Wesker’s complex humanitarian beliefs and the issues with which he engaged. The meeting and the dinner at Park Lodge Hotel which followed made a fitting conclusion to the Group’s programme of lectures for 2022-23.
25th February 2023 Ms Ruth Gooding
The Bibliographical Group held a well-attended meeting on Saturday 25th February. After coffee in the concourse at St. Paul’s Methodist Centre, we moved upstairs to the Octagon for a lecture by Ruth Gooding, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David in Lampeter, on “Conrad Gessner's Historia Animalium: a 16th-Century Natural History Encyclopaedia”. Gessner was a Swiss physician and humanist scholar. In his Historia Animalium, published in Zurich in the 1550s, he attempted to include all known creatures, including the well known, the newly discovered and the mythical. The entries vary greatly in length. The volumes are lavishly illustrated with woodcuts, some drawn for this publication and others copied from earlier artists. Gessner sought to achieve the greatest possible accuracy, but while the porcupine was drawn from a live specimen, the image of the giraffe is barely recognisable. Amongst the more amusing mythical creatures are the monk fish and the bishop fish.
The Roderic Bowen Library in Lampeter holds the first, third and fourth volumes of Historia Animalium, as well as Gessner’s Fischbuch and Schlangenbuch. They were donated by the East India Company surgeon and philanthropist Thomas Phillips, who was a generous benefactor to both St. David’s College, Lamepeter and Llandovery College. Historia Animalium has been digitised and can be viewed online.
31 January 2023 Dr. Julie Mathias
The Bibliographical Group met in the National Library on Tuesday 31st January. At the start of the meeting, committee member Rasma Meyers gave a short report on a recent ephemera workshop at the School of Art.
The main speaker was Dr. Julie Mathias of the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University. Her talk originated from a conference held in Brecon Cathedral in 2019 on reading, writing and collecting books and manuscripts in Wales from 1450 to 1850. This is a subject on which little research has been done. For her paper at the conference, and for the Bibliographical Group, Dr. Mathias studied a notebook held in the National Library, in which John Jones (1650-1727), Dean of Bangor Cathedral, recorded books and manuscripts he lent to people in the years ca. 1683-1724. Jones’s handwriting is not always easy to decipher, and he uses many abbreviations, but the notebook gives some insight both into the collecting habits of a prominent clergyman in north Wales in the late 17th and early 18th century, and into how these books were circulated. Amongst the more prominent people to whom he loaned books was the botanist and antiquary Edward Lhuyd, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The talk gave rise to many questions, which were discussed both at the meeting and over dinner afterwards at the Marine Hotel. We were pleased to welcome several new members, and encourage anyone else with an interest in books to join us.
15 November 2022 Professor Mathew Francis
The Bibliographical Group met in person on Tuesday 15th November for the first time since April, when Matthew Francis, Professor of Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University, spoke on “The Odour of a Rose: Metaphor and Imagery in Modern Poetry”. Many readers find modern poetry inaccessible. Professor Francis argued that the principal area of difficulty is not its lack of regular form, but its use of metaphor, simile and imagery, which, unlike that of most poetry of the past, is often intentionally alienating, and for good reason. By exploring the way these tropes are used we can gain a better understanding and appreciation of modern poetic practice. The lecture drew on the speaker’s experience of teaching in the Department of English and Creative Writing and on his newly-published book “Depersonalization and Creative Writing: Unreal City”, and was followed by a stimulating discussion. The meeting was held in the Four Seasons Hotel, where the Group entertained the speaker to dinner afterwards.
18 October 2022 Dr John Hinks - 'A Vast Sea of Common Readers': The Development of the Cheap Series, 1825 -1850
The Bibliographical Group began its programme for 2022-23 on Tuesday 18th October, when the speaker was Dr. John Hinks of Birmingham City University. The speaker was unable to travel to Aberystwyth as originally planned, so the meeting was held online.
The production of relatively small and cheap books began in the early days of printing with the publications of Aldus Manutius in Venice around 1500, but it was not until the second quarter of the 19th century that cheap series developed. One of the pioneers was Archibald Constable in Edinburgh, who published the novels of Sir Walter Scott. In Constable's Miscellany, begun in 1827, a volume was published every three weeks, priced at three shillings and sixpence. John Murray began publishing his Family Library at five shillings per volume two years later.
Cheap series reached London in 1830 with the start of Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley's National Library series. The following decade saw the start of Chambers's Miscellany, a popular series of non-fiction. One highly successful publisher of cheap series, little known today, was Simms and McIntyre of Belfast. These and other publishers responded to the changes in the book trade, with books being sold not only by booksellers but by newsagents and at station bookstalls, and being read while travelling. Their innovations led to series such as Penguin, Pelican and Oxford University Press World's Classics which are still published today.
12 April 2022 Ms Jennie Hill - The spirit of joy: advertising and ephemera at the Curwen Press
The Bibliographical Group held its A.G.M. in the Drwm at the National Library on Tuesday 12th April. We were pleased to welcome as our speaker Jennie Hill from the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth University, whose talk had had to be postponed twice in the last couple of years. She spoke on “The spirit of joy: advertising and ephemera at the Curwen Press”, drawing on the Oliver Simon Collection which was purchased by the College of Librarianship Wales in 1972.
Established in the nineteenth century by the Reverend John Curwen with his two sons, the Curwen Press initially undertook practical printing work with little attention to aesthetics. It is perhaps best known for adopting Sarah Glover’s method of music teaching using sonic sol-fa. Under the leadership of Harold Curwen in the early twentieth century, the press took advantage of the increased wealth of the middle class to develop high aesthetic standards and market itself accordingly. Its customers included Fortnum & Mason, Austin Reed, and the BBC. The speaker showed a wonderful array of advertisements from the collection, reflecting the Curwen Press’s emphasis on elegant typography and illustrations, including one urging customers to “get the spirit of joy into your printed things”.
15 March 2022 Mr Richard Ireland - Raffles and real life: Hornung, crime and cricket
The speaker at the Bibliographical Group meeting in St. Paul's Methodist Centre on Tuesday 15th March was Richard Ireland, who taught Legal History and Legal Philosophy at Aberystwyth for forty years before retirement. The title of his illustrated lecture was “Raffles and real life: Hornung, crime and cricket”. Raffles was the fictional creation of E.W. Hornung, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in law, and may be seen as the mirror image of Sherlock Holmes. He features in four books published between 1899 and 1909. The lecture explained the changes in criminology in the nineteenth century and the links between crime and social class, the amateur nature of Raffles’s activities as both criminal and cricketer being essential to his status as a gentleman. The speaker went on to draw parallels with other fictional criminals, notably the French creation Fantômas, and with real-life “gentleman criminals”. After the lecture, members had the opportunity tolook at a selection of books the speaker had brought, including a nineteenth-century Home Office report on crime and The Jubilee Book of Cricket, published in 1897. The entertaining discussions continued over dinner at the Marine Hotel.
12 February 2022 Dr Jill Barber, Thomas Parry of Aberystwyth: a case of mistaken identity
Some thirty members of the Bibliographical Group gathered for coffee in St. Paul's Methodist Centre on Saturday 12th February prior to our meeting in the Main Hall. Our speaker was Dr. Jill Barber, a former student at the College of Librarianship and member of staff at the Department of Information and Library Studies. She and her husband Peter, a former Minister of St. Paul’s, retired to Aberystwyth in 2019.
Dr. Barber’s talk was entitled "Thomas Parry of Aberystwyth: a case of mistaken identity". Thomas Parry was born in about 1710 and after serving as an attorney’s apprentice became established as an attorney himself. He exploited his links with the Cardiganshire gentry to amass a fortune of his own, served as agent to the Nanteos and Trawscoed estates, and was a key player in the battle over Cardiganshire’s lead mines. His dispute with the Johnes family of Abermad led to a violent attack by a mob on Parry’s house in Great Darkgate Street, and Parry was subsequently involved in a similar attack on Abermad. His involvement with the lead mines at Cwmsymlog and Llywernog brought him into conflict with Lewis Morris, Deputy Steward of the Crown Manors. Parry’s death in 1747, just after purchasing property in Llanrhystud, remains a mystery and suggests that he may have met a violent end. The lecture was richly illustrated with manuscript and cartographic sources from the National Library, and threw light on one of the most violent periods in Cardiganshire’s history
18 January 2022 Prof. David Vander Meulen Littera scripta manet: the life’s work of Warren Chappell
Taking advantage of the technology with which we have all become familiar over the past two years, the Bibliographical Group welcomed our only overseas member as our speaker on Tuesday 18th January. David L. Vander Meulen is Professor of English at the University of Virginia, where he teaches eighteenth-century English literature, bibliography, and textual criticism and scholarly editing. His talk was entitled “Littera scripta manet: the life's work of Warren Chappell”. Warren Chappell (1904-1991) was an American book designer, author, type designer, and illustrator. His early study included time with Rudolf Koch in Offenbach, and eventually he became one of the chief designers for, and a friend of, Alfred Knopf. Some of his design projects (for Knopf and others) included the novels of Sartre, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and the Winnie the Pooh books (whose jackets say he designed a “new format” for the series). He was a native of Virginia and eventually retired to Charlottesville, where he became Artist in Residence at the University of Virginia. He did pro bono work for area groups such as the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, and his last design was for a book written by Professor Vander Meulen, Pope’s Dunciad of 1728.
23 November 2021 Dr. Caroline Shenton National treasures
Dr. Caroline Shenton joined us online from Cambridge to speak about her newly-published book National Treasures, which tells the story of the evacuation of museums and galleries from London in the Second World War. The book opens in Aberystwyth with the National Library of Wales closing to all but essential readers in October 1939. Meanwhile, the National Gallery and British Museum were preparing to send their collections away from London for safety. Six trains, adapted for the purpose, transported 2,000 paintings to the University College in Bangor and the National Library in Aberystwyth. Later in the war they were moved again, to Manod Mawr quarry near Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Some of the British Museum’s collections were stored in country houses and others in London Underground tunnels. What is now the British Library was then part of the British Museum, and as the National Library in Aberystwyth had given shelter to some of its books at the end of the First World War, it was asked to do so again. The Librarian, William Llewelyn Davies (later Sir William), arranged for a tunnel to be dug on land belonging to the Library near Llanbadarn Road, half of which was used to store the Library’s own treasures, while the other half housed the most valuable books from the British Museum; a further 100 tons of books were stored in what is now the South Reading Room. They were accompanied by curators from London, who were welcomed by the staff of the National Library and worked closely with them, forming lifelong friendships.
Dr. Shenton went on to talk more briefly about the evacuation to other locations in England of collections from the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Houses of Parliament, and the Public Record Office, where she had begun her own career. The lecture, illustrated with many evocative photographs, was a fascinating account of the important role played by Aberystwyth and the National Library in preserving Britain’s heritage.
19 October 2021 Dr. Giles Bergel The Long Lives of Woodcuts on British Broadside Ballads and Chapbooks
The Bibliographical Group celebrated its 50th anniversary with a dinner at Nanteos Mansion on Tuesday 19th October. The dinner was preceded by a lecture by Dr. Giles Bergel of the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford on The Long Lives of Woodcuts on British Broadside Ballads and Chapbooks. Chapbooks and ballads are renowned for their woodcut illustrations which, in an age of mass digitisation, are increasingly available for bibliographical study. The lecture presented Dr. Bergel’s work in tracing woodcut illustrations, their original woodblocks and copies throughout the surviving corpus of British ballads and chapbooks. He discussed how woodcuts in these forms of cheap print served as visual brands for particular titles, genres or producers of cheap print, and demonstrated some of the bibliographical uses of their identification. He also showed how computer vision software can strongly support these researches, and may be further applied to printed images of all kinds.
After the lecture in the ornate surroundings of the Music Room at Nanteos, members made their way downstairs for dinner. Over coffee in the Morning Room afterwards, the Chairman Dr. David Stoker read out a message from one of the founding members, Eiluned Rees, recounting the Bibliographical Group's origins fifty years ago and sending good wishes for the society to continue to flourish.
16 March 2021 Richard Ovenden Burning the books: a history of knowledge under attack
The first lecture to the Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group was given by the Librarian of Pembroke College, Oxford on 17th March 1971. Current restrictions meant that we were unable to meet in person on our fiftieth anniversary, but we were pleased to welcome another speaker from Oxford to address our virtual meeting on Tuesday 16th March 2021. Mr. Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian, spoke on the subject of his recently-published book Burning the books: a history of knowledge under attack.
The book describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the United Kingdom’s Windrush generation. The speaker examined both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looked at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. In conclusion he mentioned the recent threat to the funding of the National Library of Wales, which Mr. Ovenden had played a part in campaigning against. The wide-ranging and thought-provoking lecture was followed by a lively discussion about the legal, political and technological aspects of the subject.
20 February 2021 Lucy Tedd Fifty years on: a look back at research, teaching and travel in the digital library world
There was an attendance of over thirty at the Bibliographical Group’s online meeting on Saturday 20th February. At the start of the meeting the Chairman announced the sad news of the death of the Group’s former Secretary, Dr. Derryan Paul, and congratulated Dr. Huw Owen on his eightieth birthday.
The speaker was Mrs. Lucy Tedd, a member of the Group’s committee. Appropriately in the Bibliographical Group’s fiftieth-anniversary year, her talk was entitled Fifty years on: a look back at research, teaching and travel in the digital library world. After studying Computer Science at Manchester, Lucy was appointed as a research assistant in the College of Librarianship Wales in the early 1970s. The College, which had been founded in 1964, was divided into four departments with a large staff, and offered a wide range of academic and professional qualifications. Lucy provided programming services for teaching, student records and the College library, and from 1976 onwards was the main researcher on a project to investigate searching online bibliographical databases funded by the British Library.Lucy gave her first published conference paper in 1977. That year saw the publication of her first book, An introduction to computer-based library systems, which ran to several editions and was translated into numerous languages. At that time she also began her professional travels to teach and speak at conferences in many countries around the world. These continued during her thirteen-year (!) maternity leave from 1979, and on some of her trips she was accompanied by her family.
In 1992 Lucy was appointed as a half-time lecturer at the College of Librarianship’s successor, the Department of Information and Library Studies at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. She combined her teaching, writing and editing with further travels, including representing the University at the opening of the National Library of Malaysia. She retired in 2012, and has been honoured with several awards for her work. Working in Llanbadarn has provided her with a wealth of international connections and opportunities to travel overseas to assist with libraries providing access to information in the digital world.
26 January 2021 Bill Hines Some unexpected benefactors in Aberystwyth University collections
The Bibliographical Group held its first meeting of 2021 on Tuesday 26th January via Zoom. At the start of the meeting the Chairman, Dr. David Stoker, announced the sad news of the deaths of three long-standing members, Dr. George Lilley, Mrs. Celia Matthews and Dr. Barbara Roe.
The speaker was Mr. Bill Hines, formerly assistant director for Information Services at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. His lecture, entitled Some unexpected benefactors in Aberystwyth University collections, was the third in his series of talks to the Group about the special collections at the University. The speaker began by briefly mentioning some of the University’s better known benefactors, including George Powell of Nanteos and Professor John Rhys. He went on to talk in more detail about some of those he described as hidden benefactors, showing examples of the books they had donated.
These included such diverse figures as Major-General Thomas Colby (1784-1852), Director of the Ordnance Survey; Dr. Robert Humphrey Cooke (1815-1893), a G.P. in Stoke Newington; the Right Rev. Basil Jones (1822-1897), Bishop of St. Davids; and John Venn (1834-1923), a Cambridge mathematician and creator of the Venn diagram. Some of the books donated are by now of considerable financial value, such as a first edition of Gulliver’s travels given by Miss Helen Owen of Weston-super-Mare, an unacknowledged relative of the Owen baronets of Orielton in Pembrokeshire. Others are unique because of their manuscript annotations, for example an edition of Cicero donated by Richard Ellis (1865-1928), a librarian in both Aberystwyth and Oxford, which contains the signature of the seventeenth-century antiquary John Aubrey.
12 December 2020 Mari James An introduction to, and virtual tour of, St David's Cathedral Library
This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Bibliographical Group’s inaugural meeting held on 14th December 1970. The planned celebratory dinner has been postponed, but the Group met via Zoom on Saturday 12th December for a virtual tour of St. David's Cathedral Library.St. David’s is the only cathedral library in Wales still held in situ. It is housed in the north side of the Cathedral above the St. Thomas Beckett chapel, built in approximately 1350, and includes a 14th-century fireplace and mediaeval stone seats for readers. The books and manuscripts were dispersed or destroyed at the Reformation, but the library holds a wealth of material dating from the early 16th century onwards.The Library Development Officer, Mari James, gave an illustrated talk about the library and its history and showed images of some of the highlights from the collections. These included the oldest book in the library, a text of the common law with commentary by Bishop William Lyndwode, printed in 1505; the Bishop Parry Welsh Bible, published 400 years ago in 1620; and an item of topical interest, Richard Mead’s Discourse on the Plague, published 300 years ago in 1720. The talk was followed by a guided tour of the library, after which Mari James was joined by the Dean, the Very Reverend Dr. Sarah Rowland Jones, and the Canon Librarian, Dr. Patrick Thomas, for a panel discussion.
The virtual tour was a prelude to a real visit to the Cathedral Library which will take place in 2021. The Group’s next meeting will be on Tuesday 26th January at 6:30p.m., when Bill Hines will speak on Some unexpected benefactors in Aberystwyth University collections.
17 November 2020 Gerald Morgan John Jones of Trefriw and Llanrwst: A unique Welsh printer
Gerald Morgan - John Jones of Trefriw and Llanrwst: a Unique Welsh Printer, Inventor and Poet."
The Bibliographical Group held its second online meeting on Tuesday 17th November. The speaker was Gerald Morgan, former Headmaster of Penweddig School. It was the third time he had addressed the Group, the first being in 1977! On this occasion his subject was John Jones of Trefriw and Llanrwst: a Unique Welsh Printer, Inventor and Poet. John Jones was the third generation of a family of printers who established themselves initially in Trefriw before moving to Llanrwst. He trained as a blacksmith, but by 1811 had taken over the running of the family press, although he initially printed under the name of his father.John Jones was more ambitious than his father, improving the quality of the printing and experimenting with different typefaces and ornaments. He was the only man ever to cast metal for printing in Wales, and he invented a guillotine for cutting paper. He printed a wide variety of material, mainly but not exclusively in Welsh, which Gerald Morgan has been collecting since the 1960s. During the course of the lecture he showed us images of many of these publications, including ballads, almanacs, periodicals, psalms with engraved music, and books on Welsh history. He was the first in Wales to print music, and also printed the smallest books ever printed in Welsh, a set of four miniature collections of hymns to be given as Sunday school prizes.Gerald has been compiling a bibliography of John Jones's press, amounting to some 300 publications. On its demise in the 1930s, the equipment of the press was sent to the Science Museum in London, but the plans to re-establish it as a working press at the St. Fagans National Museum of History never came to fruition.
20 October 2020 Frank Bott Spell checkers and grammar checkers: what they can and can’t do, and why
The Bibliographical Group began its 2020-21 programme with its first online meeting on Tuesday 20th October. The speaker was our member Frank Bott, former Head of the Computer Science Department at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. He had last addressed the Group in 2013 on Publishing Joseph Parry’s music; this time he chose the rather different topic Spell checkers and grammar checkers: what they can and can’t do, and why.The talk began by looking at the different types of error when typing: finger trouble; spelling mistakes; homophone confusion; punctuation errors; misuse or inconsistent use of upper case; grammatical errors; and stylistic infelicities, and went on to investigate how spelling and grammar checkers address these problems. Because English is so widely used, it has some of the best spelling and grammar checkers, including different versions for British or American English, but they can still have their shortcomings, identifying correct words as incorrect and vice-versa. There are some things computers cannot do, such as understanding puns.
The speaker went on to look at spelling and grammar checkers for other languages, including French and Welsh, and how they cope with such challenges as multiple forms of verbs, two or three genders, mutations, and various ways of forming plurals. He warned against spell checkers which claim to have versions for multiple languages, since in order to be effective a checker must have not just a dictionary but an understanding of the structure of the language.The lecture was followed by an interesting discussion about challenges members of the audience had faced with using spelling and grammar checkers. Sadly we were unable to follow our usual custom of taking the speaker out for dinner afterwards, but it was generally agreed that our first virtual meeting had been a success.
22 February 2020
There was a large turnout for the Bibliographical Group meeting at St. Paul’s Methodist Centre on Saturday 22nd February. After coffee in the concourse, we moved upstairs to the Octagon for a lecture by the Reverend Dr. Patrick Thomas, Canon Librarian of St. David’s Cathedral, on Medieval Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts. Canon Thomas has paid several visits to Armenia, and has been Honorary Pastor to Armenians in Wales since 2013. His talk was an introduction to the illuminated manuscripts (particularly Gospel books) which have played a central role in Armenian culture since the early medieval period. The books were sacred objects, works of art and the source of valuable historical material, and many of them survived invasions, massacres, and even being kidnapped and then ransomed. Facsimiles of a number of the manuscripts under discussion were passed around for the audience to view during the course of the lecture. The talk was very well received, and was followed as usual by a lively discussion.
28 January 2020
The advertised speaker was unable to attend the Bibliographical Group meeting on 28th January, but we are very grateful to our former Secretary, Dr. Rhidian Griffiths,for agreeing to speak at short notice on A Music Publisher in Victorian Wales. This was a sequel to a lecture the speaker had given to the Group in 2002 on The Master of Stationer's Hall: Isaac Jones Music Publisher. The subject of this lecture was Isaac Jones’s younger brother Daniel Lewis Jones (1841-1916), known by his bardic name Cynalaw. Unlike some music publishers of the period, Cynalaw was himself a musician, as well as being an eisteddfod adjudicator and one of the founders of the short-lived Society of Welsh Musicians. Having been raised at Ystradgynlais and worked as a blacksmith on the railway, he settled in Briton Ferry around 1872, where he established himself as a printer and stationer. Although he published a variety of material - including a book of jokes – Cynalaw specialised in publishing music. Much of his output was music for Sunday schools and Bands of Hope, and he published the hymns of the 1904 Revival. Unlike his brother, he published more anthems than solo songs. He continued publishing after moving to Cardigan in 1910, while the printing business in Briton Ferry was continued by his son-in-law. The lecture was accompanied by images of a number of Cynalaw’s publications, and the speaker had brought some of the originals for the audience to look at – some of them quite fragile. The talk was followed by an interesting discussion. The meeting was held in the Four Seasons Hotel, where the Group entertained the speaker to dinner afterwards.
19 November 2019.
The speaker at the Bibliographical Group on 19th November was Dr. Mary-Ann Constantine, Reader at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. She spoke on Turning Travel into Books: The Bibliographical Journeys of Thomas Pennant. Thomas Pennant (1726-1798) of Downing in Flintshire was a naturalist, antiquary and traveller, whose published works include Tours in Wales and British Zoology. The National Library holds extensive collections of Pennant’s works in both manuscript and print, including extra-illustrated copies of his books, which Dr. Constantine has been working on as part of the project Curious Travellers: Thomas Pennant and the Welsh and Scottish Tour 1760-1820. The lively and entertaining presentation was followed by a stimulating discussion.
22 October 2019
The Bibliographical Group began its 49th programme with a meeting in the National Library on Tuesday 22nd October. Peter Jones, Fellow Librarian of King’s College, Cambridge, spoke on Magic Tricks, Handy Tips, Healing Charms: Collecting Experiments in the Middle Ages. There was a great appetite in the Middle Ages for experiments (experimenta in Latin). They consist of advice on how to do useful or impressive things, like make yourself disappear, keep rats and mice away, or ward off fever by saying or writing words of power. Sometimes experiments circulated in collections, written by scribes as continuous texts, particularly when they were medical or alchemical. These texts were usually credited to great authorities like the Roman doctor Galen or the philosopher Aristotle. Otherwise experiments appear in manuscripts as single items, sometimes added in the margins or on blank leaves. They claim to be tried and tested. Mr. Jones’s illustrated talk discussed the amazing variety of medieval experiments, focussing on manuscripts and their owners. As we saw, though, the taste for experiments went on long after the Middle Ages. (YouTube tells us how to make Harry Potter’s Veritaserum.) The lecture was followed by a lively discussion, after which members adjourned to the Marine Hotel for dinner with the speaker.
26 March 2019
The Bibliographical Group held its A.G.M. in St. Paul’s Methodist Centre on Tuesday 26th March. The speaker afterwards was Dr. Keith Manley, formerly Assistant Librarian of the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. In retirement Dr. Manley has catalogued the libraries in several National Trust houses in England and Wales, including Agatha Christie’s summer house, Greenway in Devon, and the title of his talk was Bodies in the Library: The Family Book Collection of Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie's detective novels have been amongst the most popular of that genre for decades. But Agatha never went to school; her education came from the books in her parents' library. Books and reading were vital in the lives of Agatha and her family, and they collected far more than just detective stories. Many of their books survive at Greenway, and usefully illuminate her life and work. Although most of the books of her husband, Sir Max Mallowan, the archaeologist, were sold off, enough remain to illuminate his life and work and relationship with Agatha. After the meeting, the Group entertained the speaker to dinner at Medina in Market Street.
23rd February 2019
The Bibliographical Group held its annual Saturday morning meeting in St. Paul’s Methodist Centre on 23rd February. After coffee, we moved upstairs to the Octagon for a lecture by Professor Jane Cartwright of the University of Wales Trinity St. David, Lampeter on Buchedd Gwenfrewy: the Life of St. Winefride in NLW MSS Peniarth 27ii and Llanstephan 34. St. Gwenfrewy (or Winefride as she is known in English) is effectively a Welsh super saint. With the exception of St. David, of all the saints whose Welsh prose Lives will appear on the AHRC-funded website “Saints in Wales” Gwenfrewy has the most substantial hagiographical dossier. This includes two twelfth-century Latin vitae, various Middle English Lives and a fifteenth-century Welsh buchedd, as well as numerous medieval Welsh poems. Although her Latin Lives and English translations of these have been published, her Middle Life has hitherto attracted relatively little scholarly attention. Professor Cartwright’s lecture focused on the Middle Welsh Life of Gwenfrewy, paying particular attention to two manuscripts kept at the National Library of Wales: Peniarth 27ii (compiled by an unknown scribe in the second half of the fifteenth century) and Llanstephan 34 (a recusant manuscript compiled by Roger Morris of Coed-y-talwrn in Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd at the end of the sixteenth century).The lecture was followed by a lively discussion about the subject.
22 January 2019
It’s always a good sign when every seat is taken at a lecture. It was particularly appropriate that this was the case for the 300th lecture of the Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group, held on Tuesday 22nd January in the Four Seasons Hotel. The speaker was Dr. Christopher Baggs, a former lecturer at the College of Librarianship in Llanbadarn, who we were surprised to learn had last spoken to the Group 21 years ago. On this occasion his subject was George Gissing, Library History and Me. While teaching at the College of Librarianship, Dr. Baggs was asked to supervise a student who was doing research on the 19th-century novelist George Gissing, and in order to do so explored Gissing’s life and work himself. Gissing sought to portray the life of the working class in his 23 novels, and did much of his research in the libraries of the various towns where he lived and stayed. This led our speaker to investigate the library provision available to Gissing: public libraries, circulating libraries, subscription libraries, and the reading room of the British Museum.The lecture was followed by a lively discussion.
21 November 2018
The speaker at the Bibliographical Group on Tuesday 20th November was Dr. Dylan Foster Evans, a native of Tywyn with family connexions in Aberystwyth, who is now Head of the School of Welsh at Cardiff University. The title of his lecture, held in the Drwm at the National Library, was Sir John Prise of Brecon and his Commonplace Book. Sir John Prise (1502?-1555) held several important offices during the reign of Henry VIII, including being Secretary of the Council in Wales and the Marches. He was involved in the dissolution of the monasteries, during which he acquired a number of valuable books and manuscripts, including the earliest Welsh manuscript, the Black Book of Carmarthen. He was also the author of Yn y Lhyvyr hwnn, the first book printed in the Welsh language, and Historiae Britannicae Defensio, a defence of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Welsh history. The National Library held an exhibition about him in 2015.The commonplace book, now held at Balliol College, Oxford, is Sir John’s manuscript collection of personal notes, selections from Welsh literature, wisdom and religious texts, a bardic grammar and short comic narratives (some of which have been considered unfit for publication!). Together these throw valuable light on a figure who played an active part in Welsh political and religious life during the period of the Protestant Reformation and the so-called “Acts of Union”.
21 October 2018
The Bibliographical Group began its 2018-19 programme on Tuesday 16th October, when Dr. Nicolas Bell, Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, spoke on The Welsh Martial: A Bibliographical Excursion with John Owen. Our speaker began by telling us that John Owen was the most widely published Welsh poet before Dylan Thomas and probably the most widely published British poet before the 19th century. He was proud of his Welsh upbringing, calling himself “Cambro-Britannus”, but wrote only in Latin epigrams.Dr. Bell’s interest in Owen began as a result of the recent donation of a large collection of editions of his works to the Wren Library at Trinity College. Born in 1563/4, John Owen was the son of the Sheriff of Caernarvonshire. After periods in Oxford, Monmouthshire and Warwick, he settled in London and made a career as a professional epigrammatist, publishing his first anthology in 1606. He was patronised by some of the leading political figures of the day, including Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales (the elder brother of Charles I), who died before he could accede to the throne. Amongst Prince Henry’s childhood schoolbooks at Trinity is a book of epigrams in John Owen’s handwriting.The speaker went on to show images of a number of editions of Owen’s epigrams from the 17th to 19th centuries, printed in various countries, including translations into several European languages. Some contain the bookplates of famous collectors, while others have been expurgated because of their anti-Catholic content. Dr. Bell concluded that this forgotten Welshman deserves renewed study.
1 May 2018
The Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group would like to thank the Oxford Bibliographical Society for a grant of £350 towards the costs of running the Gregynog Symposium in 2017.
23 March 2018
The Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group held its A.G.M. in the National Library on Tuesday 20th March. Dr. Lionel Madden stood down at the meeting after twelve years as Chairman, and Dr. David Stoker was elected as his successor. As a token of the Group’s thanks, an extract was presented to Dr. Madden from The Misfortunes of Elphin by Thomas Love Peacock, specially printed for the occasion by Huw Ceiriog Jones, a member of the Group’s committee, at Gwasg Nant y Mynydd. Flowers were presented to Mrs. Madden.
The speaker for the evening was Bill Hines, formerly Assistant Director for Information Services at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. In a sequel to a talk given to the Group in 2015, he spoke on Politicians, Princes and Prelates: More Rambles around the Hugh Owen Library Stacks. The illustrated lecture was the result of the speaker’s continuing research into the provenance of rare books in the University Library, focusing in particular on politicians, royalty and churchmen. These ranged from a 1572 Bible with the binding stamp of Anne of Denmark, Electress of Saxony, to a volume with the bookplate of William Wilberforce.After the meeting, the Group entertained Dr. and Mrs. Madden to dinner at Medina in Market Street.
20 February 2018
THE Octagon at St Paul’s Methodist Centre was filled almost to capacity for the Bibliographical Group meeting on Saturday, 17 February. The speaker was Prof Bill Bell, who is Professor of Bibliography at Cardiff University.. His illustrated lecture entitled ‘What did Tommy Read?’, based on the findings of Prof Bell’s forthcoming monograph, explored the reading habits of troops on the Western Front in the First World War. There is a great deal of evidence for the range of literacies and tastes among British troops at the time as well as a number of uses to which the printed word was put. The supplies from home were not always suited to Tommy’s taste, and were not always received in predictable ways. As the War progressed, the authorities at home attempted to accommodate the needs
of soldiers as they came to recognise that provision of reading matter was essential to troop morale. All the same, effects did not always live up to expectations.
The meeting was preceded by coffee at St Paul’s. Following a lively discussion after the lecture, the group entertained the speaker to lunch at the Pier Brasserie.The next meeting will be the AGM in the National Library on Tuesday, 20 March, at 6.30pm, after which Bill Hines will speak on ‘Politicians, Princes and Prelates: More Rambles’ around the Hugh Owen Library Stacks.
28 November 2017
THE Bibliographical Group met at St Paul’s Methodist Centre on Tuesday, 21 November, when the speaker was Dr David Stoker, a former lecturer in the Department of Information Studies at Aberystwyth and a member of the group’s committee.The title of his lecture was The Cheap Repository Tracts in Britain, Ireland and America, 1795-1830.The Cheap Repository Tracts scheme was instigated in 1795 by Hannah More to counteract the influence of popular street literature then circulating, and especially the growing influence of Thomas Paine.The lecture was accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation showing images of many of the tracts and their striking woodcut illustrations.Dr Stoker also brought a selection of the tracts from his own collection for the audience to look at afterwards. Members then entertained the speaker to dinner at the Marine Hotel.
28 October 2017
THE Aberystwyth Bibliographical Group began its programme for 2017-18 with a meeting at St Paul’s Methodist Centre on Tuesday, 24 October.After some initial technical problems had been solved, members enjoyed an illustrated lecture on Provenance revisited by Dr David Pearson, former director of culture, heritage and libraries at the City of London Corporation.The speaker’s book Provenance Research in Book History was first published nearly 25 years ago, and he has been working on a revised edition which is due to be published next year.Dr Pearson spoke about the various types of provenance information found in books: marginal annotations, manuscript notes on endpapers, bookplates, personalised book bindings.Opinions were divided in the audience as to whether one should annotate one’s own books, but it was generally agreed that historical annotations in books are valuable for research and should be recorded.Libraries have been recording provenance information in their catalogues for decades, and much progress has been made in the past 25 years, thanks in part to technical advances, but much remains to be done.After the meeting, members entertained the speaker to dinner at Medina in Market Street.