Edward Williams

Edward Williams, better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg, was born in 1747 in Llancarfan, Glamorgan, Wales. A stonemason by trade and largely self-educated, he wrote poetry in Welsh and English and became an influential figure in the late eighteenth-century revival of Welsh literary and cultural life. Williams was also an antiquarian: he gathered manuscripts, studied Welsh tradition and promoted his own account of ancient bardic customs. Later scholarship showed that he invented or altered some of the sources behind that account. His work is therefore both a record of Welsh cultural revival and a reminder that literary tradition can be shaped by its interpreters.

Among the titles associated with Williams are The Poems of Iolo Morganwg and Barddas, the latter published after his death from materials he supplied and compiled by John Williams ab Ithel. Across his writing, Welsh language and identity, poetry, and the imagined inheritance of the bards are recurring concerns. His verse draws on Welsh poetic traditions while reflecting the creative energy of his own era; his antiquarian writing blends research with imaginative reconstruction. That mixture has made him a consequential, sometimes contested figure in Welsh letters. Listeners can explore the works here to encounter both his poetry and the ideas that helped shape modern perceptions of Welsh bardic culture.