DAVIES, Jonathan Ceredig.

£2,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Life, Travels and Reminiscences. A Herculean labour of love: one of 70 copies only, printed for private circulation by the author in his old age at his own printing-press. This copy inscribed "yours sincerely, J. Ceredig Davies" on the frontispiece and forwarded to his cousin, the Hon. Dan W. Williams of Jackson, Ohio. Davies's memoirs comprise his journeys to Patagonia and Australia. Davies (1859-1932) is a fascinating figure, born in Cardiganshire, largely self-taught, "a keen observer with a retentive memory. His works are a mine of information on the folk-customs of many countries... [he] did much to further the spiritual and cultural movements among the English and Welsh colonists" that he met in Patagonia and Australia (Dictionary of Welsh Biography). His memoirs are an interesting and well-written account of a lifetime of travel, beginning with a voyage to Patagonia in 1875 as a boy of 16, attracted by the Welsh colony established in the Chubut Valley in 1865, and to Australia in 1898 and 1901. From the mid-1920s he "spent the remaining years of his life in Wales, devoting himself entirely to the study of Welsh history, folk-lore, and genealogy" (ibid.). Among his works, the most important is perhaps Folk-Lore of West and Mid-Wales (Aberystwyth, 1911). The story of Davies's book is a remarkable one. "Judged by ordinary standards it cannot be compared with the work of the trained craftsman, but it would be difficult to find a finer example of dogged perseverance. Old ag

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