Elizabeth Edwards BA, MA, PhD

Liz Edwards studied English at Trinity College, Oxford, and the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of York, before joining the Centre in January 2009 as a Research Fellow on the ‘Wales and the French Revolution’ project. Her research interests lie in the literature and culture of the eighteenth century and the Romantic period, with a particular focus on literary recoveries, textual editing, archipelagic critical approaches, and the history of women’s writing. Her first book was a critical anthology of Anglophone Welsh verse from the period 1789–1806, which draws on manuscripts, newspapers and little-known printed works in order to present a new body of literature from, and about, Romantic-era Wales. Her second book, an edition of the poetry of the Anglesey labouring-class writer Richard Llwyd (1752–1835), was published by Trent Editions in their ‘Poetry Recoveries’ series in 2016. Liz is currently writing a book about Wales and women’s writing in the period 1789–1830, and editing a selection of tours of Wales for the AHRC-funded project ‘Curious Travellers: Thomas Pennant and the Welsh and Scottish Tour (1760–1820)’.

In September 2013, Liz convened the conference ‘Four Nations Fiction: Women and the Novel, 1780–1830’ at the National Library of Wales. A selection of articles arising from this conference appeared in 2017 as a special issue of the journal Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780–1840, which is freely available here:

http://www.romtext.org.uk/issues/issue-22.

In April 2016, Liz co-presented a series of podcasts on eighteenth-century women’s writing for the New Statesman, titled ‘The Great Forgetting: Women Writers before Jane Austen’, which you can listen to here: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/fiction/2016/04/hidden-histories-podcast.

Liz has also published articles and book chapters on Welsh Gothic, Romantic-period poetry, national song, and travel writing. She is currently co-supervising a PhD thesis on Northern English Travellers to Wales and Scotland (1760–1820), and welcomes enquiries about doctoral supervision in any of the fields mentioned above.

Selected publications

‘Four nations fiction by women, 1789–1830: introduction’, Four Nations Fiction, special issue of Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780–1840,22 (2017), 11–22.

with Mary-Ann Constantine, ‘Introduction/Rhagymadrodd’, Teithwyr Chwilfrydig: Symud, Tirlun, Celf / Curious Travellers: Movement, Landscape, Art, exhibition catalogue (Aberystwyth, 2017), pp. 3–10.

‘“A galaxy of the blended lights”: the reception of Thomas Pennant’, in Mary-Ann Constantine and Nigel Leask (eds.), Enlightenment Travel and British Identities: Thomas Pennant’s Tours of Scotland and Wales (London, 2017), pp. 141–60.

‘“Local and contemporary”: reception, community and the poetry of Ann Julia Hatton (‘Ann of Swansea’)’, ‘Welsh Women’s Writing 1536–1914’, special issue of Women’s Writing, ed. Jane Aaron (2017).

‘Archipelagic Anglesey: coastal contexts for Romantic-period poetry and travel writing’, Transactions of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Field Club 2015–16 (2016), 100–13.

(ed. and intro.), Richard Llwyd: Beaumaris Bay and Other Poems (Nottingham, 2016), 240 pp. 

‘Footnotes to a Nation: Richard Llwyd’s Beaumaris Bay (1800)’, in Joanna Fowler and Allan Ingram (eds.), Voice and Context in Eighteenth-Century Verse: Order in Variety (Basingstoke, 2015), pp. 133–54.

‘“Lonely and voiceless your halls must remain”: Romantic-era national song and Felicia Hemans’s Welsh Melodies (1822)’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies,38: 1 (2015), 83–97.

‘“Place makes a great Difference”: Hester Piozzi’s Welsh independence’, Wales Arts Review, 3:17. 

‘“Je me suis cru l’espace d’un instant dans mon proper pays”: paysage et voyage dans le pays de Galles du dix-huitième siècle’, in Jean-Yves le Disez and Heather Williams (eds.), Regards croisés sur la Bretagne et le pays de Galles/Cross-Cultural Essays on Wales and Brittany (Brest, 2013), pp. 155–72.

‘The voices of war: poetry from Wales, 1794–1804’, in Mary-Ann Constantine and Dafydd Johnston (eds.), Footsteps of Liberty and Revolt: Essays on Wales and the French Revolution (Cardiff, 2013), pp. 271–90.

(ed. and intro.), English-Language Poetry from Wales 1789–1806 (Cardiff, 2013), 328 pp.

‘Confined to a Living Grave: Welsh Gothic and the French Revolution’, in Marion Gibson, Garry Tregidga and Shelley Trower (eds.), Mysticism, Myth, and Celtic Nationalism (London, 2012), pp. 87–98.

with Mary-Ann Constantine, ‘Bard of Liberty: Iolo Morganwg, Wales and radical song’, in Michael Brown, John Kirk and Andrew Noble (eds.), United Islands? The Languages of Resistance (London, 2012), pp. 63–76.

‘Iniquity, terror and survival: Welsh Gothic, 1789–1804’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35: 1 (2012), 119–33.