WELSH FOLK TALES

Second edition. Handsomely bound in full green morocco with five raised bands to the spine, the compartments decorated with gilt dragons. There is a red leather dragon inlay with gilt details to the upper and lower boards. Housed in a custom box lettered in gilt to the spine. The text is provided in both Welsh and English; if starting with the Welsh side, the book can be turned upside down, the 'back' becoming the 'front' of the English version. Illustrated with a colour frontispiece plate of Margaret D. Jones' 'Welsh Folk Tales' map, further black and white artwork throughout also by Jones, and black and white photographs provided by the Welsh Folk Museum. A fine copy, the binding square, tight and fresh. The contents are clean and bright throughout and without previous owners' stamps or inscriptions. The box is also in fine condition. An attractive example in a unique craft binding.

An important collection of Welsh folk tales by the folklorist Robin Gwyndaf. Gwyndaf was born in 1941 into a majority Welsh speaking community to a father who was a community-bard. He developed a strong interest in Welsh folk traditions from an early age, and before publishing 'Welsh Folk Tales' (first published in 1989) he had spent over twenty years conducting a national survey of the Welsh folk narrative tradition. This involved interviews with over 2,500 people and resulted in around 600 hours of audio recordings and around 18,000 items of narrative. Gwyndaf continued to record Welsh folk narratives until 2018. Margaret D. Jones (1918-2024) began exhibiting and publishing her illustrations, which primarily depicted motifs and locations from Welsh folklore, in her sixties. Her distinctive work quickly became a great success, resulting in commissions from the Arts Council of Wales, several books, posters and maps, and playing a significant part in shaping the aesthetic sensibilities of Welsh folk lore in the modern imagination. Jones died in 2024 at the age of 105.