Dr Ffion Mair Jones MA, PhD

Ffion works on projects related to the eighteenth century. The most recent of these are ‘Curious Travellers: Thomas Pennant and Travel to Wales and Scotland 1760–1820’ (2014–22) and its follow-up (2023–5). She has transcribed and created digital editions of Thomas Pennant’s extensive and varied letters, working specifically on his Welsh correspondence and on correspondence with the print collector Richard Bull. 

She is furthermore interested in Pennant’s early correspondence; his Continental correspondence and journey (1765); the process of creating British Zoology; his artists; and his reception in Welsh-speaking circles up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Elements of this work feature prominently in her monograph, Thomas Pennant (1726–1798): Cysylltiadau Cymreig, to be published by the University of Wales Press, 2025. For the second part of the project, her focus is on creating digital editions of Pennant’s manuscript travelogue, 1770, and of the second volume of A Tour in Wales.

Previously, Ffion worked on the ‘Iolo Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales, 1740–1918’ project, co-editing Iolo’s correspondence, The Correspondence of Iolo Morganwg, 3 vols. (Cardiff, 2007), and publishing a monograph on Iolo’s marginalia, ‘The Bard is a Very Singular Character’: Iolo Morganwg, Marginalia and Print Culture (Cardiff, 2010).

As a member of the ‘Wales and the French Revolution’ project, she edited a volume of ballads from the period between the early years of the Revolution and the end of the Napoleonic wars, Welsh Ballads of the French Revolution 1793–1815 (Cardiff, 2012); several articles about the ballad genre; and an edition of an interlude by Huw Jones, Glan Conwy – a colourful Welsh take on the events of the Revolution in France.

Her interest in the popular genre of the interlude has been further served by work on texts relaying historical material dealing with the seventeenth-century British Civil Wars (see the edition of Huw Morys, Y Rhyfel Cartrefol (Bangor, 2008)) and the American and French revolutions, and chronicle material such as the history of King Lear. 

In addition to this, she is interested in matters relating to literacy in the eighteenth century as suggested by the Welsh ballads and in the use of the Welsh language in the letters of the Morris brothers of Anglesey, especially in relation to the translation of Enlightenment vocabulary; and in translation between English and Welsh more generally.

As a member of a team involved in updating elements of the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, she has published a number of articles for this online resource, primarily entries on women.

• eighteenth-century correspondence and correspondence networks, with a focus on Welsh material
• potential and use of network analysis for reading correspondence
• scientific and natural history correspondence
• representing natural history and landscape in art
• antiquarian circles in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain
• Welsh ballads and folk-plays
•  translation into and from Welsh in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
• biographies of women and people of ethnic minority background in Wales

• Jones, Ffion Mair, Y Chwyldro Ffrengig a’r Anterliwt: Hanes Bywyd a Marwolaeth Brenin a Brenhines Ffrainc gan Huw Jones, Glanconwy (Caerdydd: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 2014)
• ––––––– ‘A New Look at the Correspondence of Thomas Pennant and Richard Bull (1773–1798)’
• ––––––– ‘“Lôn sidan o syniadau sydd yn gweu/(heb chwys na swigod traed i flino’i hynt)”: Thomas Pennant yn Tsieina’
• ––––––– ‘Rhwng Pennant a’i Thad: “Castellau Y Fflynt” Angharad Llwyd (1780–1866)’, Studia Celtica, LVII (2023), 131–50
• ––––––– ‘Thomas Pennant, Affrica a Chaethwasiaeth’ (9 March 2017)
• ––––––– ‘Thomas Pennant a’r Morrisiaid: Tri Llythyr o Archifdy Sirol Swydd Warwig’, Tlysau’r Hen Oesoedd, 40 (October 2016), 5–14
• ––––––– ‘Thomas Pennant, Emanuel Mendes da Costa, a “nod glas Mawddwy”‘, Journal of the Merioneth Historical and Record Society, XIX, no. I (2022), 35–48
• ––––––– ‘William Morris a Thomas Pennant: Cysylltiadau Cyffredin’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (2019), 23–48
• ––––––– ‘Y Llanc yn Baronhill’, in Curious Travellers Research Blog
• ––––––– (ed.), ‘The Correspondence of Thomas Pennant and Richard Bull’
• ––––––– (ed.), ‘Welsh Circles’
• ––––––– (ed.), Welsh Correspondence of the French Revolution 1789–1802 (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2018)
• –––––––, Philip Beeley, and Yann Ryan, ‘“From the Cabinets of mere vertuosi into the busy world”: Thomas Pennant’s Natural Philosophical Networks and the Creation of British Zoology, 1752–1766’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 86.2 (2024)

Dictionary of Welsh Biography: new records

• Gifford, Isabella (c.1825–1891)
• Grossman, Yehudit Anastasia (1919–2011)
• Hughes, Gainor (1745–1780)
• Jarman, Eldra Mary (1917–2000)
• Jones, Elizabeth May Watkin (1907–1965)
• Kotschnig, Elined Prys (1895–1983)
• Philipps, Leonora (1862–1915)
• Rhŷs, Elizabeth (1841–1911)
• Roberts, Gwen Rees (1916–2002)
• Shand, Frances Batty (c.1815–1885)
• Williams, Frances (Fanny) (?1760–c.1801)
• Ystumllyn, John (d. 1786)