Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

America provides historians and sociologists with an invaluable research tool. Motivated by the 'enlightened practice of disinterment scholarship', Professor Holt has gathered 2,179 entries into the most comprehensive source of its kind. The majority are English-language references, classified into sections that range from religion to law, and theatre to medicine, but some three hundred Welsh-language entries are also listed. Despite recent developments in the historiography of Wales, its welcome appearance rightly draws attention to the paucity of bibliographic material on Welsh women. Whether Wales and America should have been incorporated into the same volume, however, is a question to which the publishers should have given fuller consideration. As it is, the volume begs two questions. Firstly, how best to expand the sections on Wales, particularly the Welsh-language items. Secondly, whether studies of Welsh women in England and the British Empire, particularly in Africa, India and Australia, might be introduced in any future redactions. But Welsh Women is a vitally important point of departure, and a long overdue one at that. ALED JONES Aberystwyth. THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN. By Sir John Gibson. First published 1891, reprinted with an introduction by W. Gareth Evans. Gwasg Gomer, Llandysul, 1992. Pp. 109. £ 3.75 Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the history of women in Wales there have, hitherto, been few available primary sources to satisfy the demand from students and women's groups. This has led to a fruitful search for relevant materials and the republication of this forgotten little book by Sir John Gibson makes a valuable contribution to that rediscovery of women's history in Wales. Gibson was the editor of the Cambrian News at Aberystwyth from 1873 until his death in 1915 and he tirelessly exploited the columns of his own newspaper (which he had bought in 1880) to promulgate his generally progressive and Liberal opinions. As Gareth Evans demonstrates in his useful and informative introduction, one of the causes to which he was most committed was women's emancipation and this was an issue to which he returned regularly in his newspapers. In 1891 he was moved to publish a short book on the question (which he reprinted, with an enhanced conclusion, in 1894) and it is that book which has now been reprinted. It is a fascinating text which, along with the introduction, is certain to succeed in capturing the interests of students and all others with an interest in the role of women, not only in Victorian, but also in contemporary, society. For Gibson was not merely an advocate of extending the franchise to women-his approach was much more radical and root-and-branch. His thesis rested on the belief that women were enslaved, not because of any real differences which might exist between the sexes but rather because men had so arranged the world, and, in particular, so framed its laws, that women's unequal status was ensured. 'When once the subject of women's sphere is examined it is seen that there are no distinct spheres for the sexes, and that women have been driven by unjust and oppressive legal enactments into narrow fields of action.' (p. 87)