- Wild Wales
"Wild Wales" is a travel book by the English Victorian gentleman writer
George Borrow , (1803 - 1881), first published in1862 .Background
The book, to give it its full title is 'Wild Wales : Its people, language and scenery'. It has been described as 'robust, dramatic and cheerful' and the author as 'an agreeably eccentric, larger-than-life, jovial man whose laughter rings all through the book'.
The book recounts Borrow's personal experiences and insights while touring
Wales alone on foot after a family holiday inLlangollen in 1854, and has come to be regarded as a source of useful information about the social and geographical history of the country at that time.The author makes much of his self taught ability to speak the
Welsh language and how surprised the native Welsh people he meets and talks to are by both his linguistic abilities and his travels, education and personality, and also by his idiosyncratic pronunciation of their language.Borrow's Journey
He gives us a detailed account of his journey and starts his travels into
North Wales fromChester , passing en route throughWrexham ,Llangollen ,Corwen andBettws-y-coed toBangor ,Anglesey ,Caernarfon ,Bala ,Machynlleth and then south, throughMid Wales toTregaron andLampeter eventually arriving in some of the industrial areas around theSouth Wales coalfield such asBrynamman ,Merthyr Tydfil andPontardawe before visitingSwansea andNeath and leaving the country viaCaerphilly ,Newport andChepstow .His voice is distinctive and at times a little overbearing but he provides a unique snapshot of the parts of the country that he visited at that particular point in time.
He never returned to deepen his knowledge and failed to cover the many parts of Wales he left out of this work. In effect 'Wild Wales' is a tourist's snapshot albeit a valuable and unique one.
External Links
* [http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/contents_page.jsp?t_id=Borrow Vision of Britain on George Borrow's Wild Wales]
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