Welsh Wanderer
GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS.
The itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, A.D. MCLXXXVIII. By Giraldus de Barri; translated into English, and illustrated with views, annotations, and a life of Giraldus, by Sir Richard Colt Hoare …
London, for William Miller, 1806.
2 vols, 4to, pp. [6], vi, [9], xi-cxci, [1], 219, [5], with 32 engraved plates (1 folding, some of the maps in colour); [6], 440, [4], with 27 engraved plates and a large folding coloured map of Wales; some foxing and finger marks, small loss to blank corner of vol. 2 plate 8, small tear to fold of map (without loss); overall a very good clean copy in later nineteenth-century calf, gilt border to covers, spines in compartments lettered and decorated in gilt, marbled edges and endpapers; some splitting to joints and wear to spine ends, corners and edges, light abrasions to covers; inscription to front free endpapers ‘An Heir Loom’, and at head of titles ‘James Barry 1839'.
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The itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, A.D. MCLXXXVIII. By Giraldus de Barri; translated into English, and illustrated with views, annotations, and a life of Giraldus, by Sir Richard Colt Hoare …
First edition of this delightful work devoted to the life and writings of the great medieval historian Gerald of Wales, by the English antiquary Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838). Hoare ‘had a particular fondness for Wales, as did many of his fellow antiquaries, and he made a significant contribution to its travel literature with his translation of Gerald of Wales’ (ODNB).
Hoare opens with a biography of Gerald (c.1146–c. 1223), ending with a note of manuscripts of his works preserved at the British Museum, in Lambeth Palace Library, and at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. He then gives a history of Wales from the first Roman invasion of Britain to the year 1188, before providing translations, with notes, of Gerald’s two great works, the Itinerarium Cambriae and Descriptio Cambriae, the first of which resulted from Gerald’s tour of Wales in the company of Archbishop Baldwin of Forde to recruit for the Third Crusade. By way of supplementary material, Hoare also gives an account of the twelfth-century Powys prince and poet Owain Cyfeiliog, and of the development of Welsh architecture from William the Conqueror to the sixteenth century.
The two volumes are richly illustrated with maps, depictions of monuments and antiquities, and romantic views of Welsh scenery.
