Weaving together themes of gender, liberty, power and transgression, Ann Julia Hatton’s Cambrian Pictures; or, Every One Has Errors (1810) is a comedy of manners and morals with serious intent.
Notable for its inverse seduction plots, Cambrian Pictures is a witty and colourful courtship novel with a lively cast of characters: a cross-dressing Welsh girl duels with an unwelcome suitor, an ageing English aristocrat kidnaps the much-younger object of her lust.
Mainly located in contemporary north Wales, Hatton explores idealised Welsh contexts in opposition to English-set metropolitan corruption. Featuring lyrical passages of description and sharply-observed domestic scenes, Cambrian Pictures is also stylistically interesting as a vehicle for poetry – in quotation and Hatton’s own. Drawing on domestic travel writing and the emergence of the Gothic, Cambrian Pictures is one of the strongest Welsh-set novels of the Romantic period.
About the author
Elizabeth Edwards is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies in Aberystwyth. Her research focuses on women’s writing, travel writing and Welsh writing in English. Her publications includes English-Language Poetry from Wales 1789-1806 (University of Wales Press, 2013) and Richard Llwyd: Beaumaris Bay and Other Poems (Trents Editions, 2016).
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