Two doctors and a folklorist meet in northern Brittany in 1898, determined to prove that leprosy still exists. But their ardour for collecting evidence draws them into a dark, watchful landscape where superstition is rife. Many of the stories in All the Souls hover round themes of 'collecting' and recovering the past. From poignant and dangerous obsessions with the iconic (a Romano-British figurine; a carved wooden Christ-child; a bronze angel) to direct, often puzzled conversations with ghosts, the characters in this book all strive to make contact with the impossible. A girl becomes obsessed with a figure she only sees through a Camera Obscura; an angry man strikes up a friendship with a sixth-century saint; a revenant mother by a mountain lake tries to explain herself to a grieving friend.

In July 1789 George Cadogan Morgan, born in Bridgend, Wales, and the nephew of the celebrated radical dissenter Richard Price (1723-91), found himself caught up in the opening events of the French Revolution and its consequences. In 1808, his family left Britain for America where his son, Richard Price Morgan, travelled extensively, made a descent of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by raft and helped build some of the early American railroads. The adventures of both men are related here via letters George sent home to his family from France and through the autobiography written by his son in America.

A special number devoted to Celtic material. This special number of the well-established series Arthurian Literature is devoted to Celtic material. Contributions, from leading experts in Celtic Studies, cover Welsh, Irish and Breton material, from medieval texts to oral traditions surviving into modern times. The volume reflects current trends and new approaches in this field whilst also making available in English material hitherto inaccessible to those with no reading knowledge of the Celticlanguages. CERIDWEN LLOYD-MORGAN has published widely in the field of Arthurian studies. She is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Welsh, Cardiff University.

During Iolo Morganwg's lifetime Britain was obsessed with literary forgery. This book reveals the unexpected connections and hidden influences behind Britain's most successful (and hence, perhaps, least visible) Romantic forger. Quoting extensively from unpublished manuscripts, it explores Iolo's own strongly-held ideas about the Truth-historical, literary and religious - and shows how he responded to the work and the criticism of both James Macpherson and Thomas Chatterton. It also shows how, after death, his ideas affected the Breton writer Hersart de La Villemarque, whose ordination as a Iolo-style bard in 1838 helped to bring about a Celtic cultural revival in Brittany. The subject sits neatly at the intersection of two currently popular critical domains: British Romantic literary forgery, and Celticism.

The late eighteenth century was one of the most exciting and unsettling periods in European history, with the shock-waves of the French Revolution rippling around the world. As this collection of essays by leading scholars shows, Wales was no exception. From political pamphlets to a Denbighshire folk-play, from bardic poetry to the remodelling of the Welsh landscape itself, responses to the revolutionary ferment of ideas took many forms. We see how Welsh poets and preachers negotiated complex London - Wales networks of patronage and even more complex issues of national and cultural loyalty; and how the landscape itself is reimagined in fiction, remodelled a la Rousseau, while it rapidly emptied as impoverished farming families emigrated to the New World. Drawing on a wealth of vibrant material in both Welsh and English, much of it unpublished, this collection marks another important contribution to 'four nations' criticism, and offers new insights into the tensions and flashpoints of Romantic-period Wales.

This is a vivid introduction, by two of the foremost scholars in the field, to one of the most fascinating and little-known song traditions in Europe, the Breton gwerz, or ballad. These narrative songs, collected in Western Brittany from the 19th century to the present day, recount a wealth of stories based on tragic local events or legends. They tell of shipwrecks, abductions, accidents and murders, miraculous rescues, penitent souls, and strange journeys. Quite unlike songs from the neighbouring French tradition, and distinct from anything else in the other Celtic languages, these ballads unfold in clear, spare verses, filled with striking imagery: they are often highly dramatic in nature. Historians of popular culture will find much to explore here, as will medievalists interested in tracing themes and legends across different European cultures, or linguists looking for rare material in Breton. But the gwerziou speak to readers and listeners of all kinds, with stories of violence, love, and grief that touch us directly today. This generous selection of songs is presented here for the first time in the original Breton with English translations and musical notation; an accompanying CD showcases some of the most famous Breton traditional singers. A comprehensive introductory essay offers insights into the history of ballad collection in Brittany, the nature of the songs, and the contexts in which they have been performed.