R. Iestyn Hughes Knihy

This evocative book uses the pioneering work of early photographers and carefully chosen quotations from the period to illustrate the dramatic social changes that took place in Wales at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book recaptures the spirit of that age. Wales from the 1890s to the outbreak of the Great War was a place of huge variety and contrast in landscape, society and even language. As the country came to terms with the new century, many of the fissures which would eventually crack the crust of empire could be seen forming in Wales - empire and nationalism, royalty and federalism, church and state, capitalism and socialism. As a small nation lying uncomfortably next to her English neighbour, Wales was to awake during the reign of Victoria to face a rapidly changing reality. No longer remote because of the railways, no longer predominantly Welsh speaking because of momentous demographic change, no longer exclusively rural because of the industrial expansion of the south, no longer bound to the state religion because of the rise of nonconformism. This book, through the use of contemporary photographs and text, creates a patchwork picture of those exciting times. It places, against a backdrop of ordinary life, some of the key events and issues which were the preoccupation of the age. The photographs, all taken from the vast collections of the National Library of Wales, give a fascinating glimpse of the picturesque Wales of the new tourist, of rural life as it was really lived, of the industrialization of the south, of the social tensions which often lay beneath the tranquil surface. Wales of One Hundred Years ago will appeal to everyone who is interested in this period, which now seems so far removed in time from our own.