Dr Elizabeth Edwards BA, MA, PhD

Research Fellow

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.

Liz’s 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. She 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.

(ed.), Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780–1840, 22 (2017), special issue on ‘Four Nations Fiction by Women, 1789–1830’

‘Four nations fiction by women, 1789–1830: introduction’, 
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: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 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: Anthem, 2017), pp. 141–60

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

‘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 introduction), Richard Llwyd: Beaumaris Bay and Other Poems (Nottingham: Trent Editions, 2016)

‘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: Palgrave Macmillan, 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 (August 2014): walesartsreview.org

‘ “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: CRBC, 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: UWP, 2013), pp. 271–90

(ed. and introduction), English-Language Poetry from Wales 1789–1806 (Cardiff: UWP, 2013) 

‘Confined to a living grave: Welsh Gothic and the French Revolution’, in Marion Gibson, Garry Tregidga and Shelley Trower (eds.), Mysticism, Myth, and Celtic Identity (London: Routledge, 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: Routledge, 2012), pp. 63–76

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