Inventor of Britain: The Complete Works of Humphrey Llwyd

Humphrey Llwyd of Denbighshire (1527-68) ranks among the leading figures of the Welsh Renaissance. His maps and treatises on Welsh and British geography were admired and printed by the great Dutch atlas-maker Abraham Ortelius. Author of the first book on the history and topography of the entire island of Britain, Llwyd coined the fateful phrase "the British empire"; his work provided the cornerstone for an emerging vision of a unified, expansive, British state. His remarkable book collection still lies at the heart of one of Britain's central institutions, the British Library.

In the decades after his death, Llwyd's literary influence in both England and Wales was remarkable. His vision of a unified Britain, in advance of the union of the crowns, influenced English writers including William Camden, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, and John Dee. His distinctive map of Wales, Cambriae Typus, remained in print well into the eighteenth century. Providing the basis for David Powel's Historie of Cambria (1584), Llwyd's history of medieval Wales remained the standard version for over two hundred years.

There is as yet no edition of Llwyd's collected works, and the majority of his writings have never been the subject of a scholarly edition. In this post-devolution and post-referendum era, when the identity of the British state and relationships among its constituent nations remain under urgent review, Llwyd's works can provide a unique insight into the origins of our present dilemmas. New approaches to Llwyd and his legacy will be greatly aided by a scholarly yet accessible edition of his writings and his maps.

This project aims to use a new edition as a vehicle to resituate Llwyd and his vision of Britain within multiple national cultures. The project's foundation is the scholarly work required to produce that new edition. Although Llwyd's corpus is not immense (six works totalling c. 105,000 words, and two maps), it includes works in English, Latin and Welsh in both print and manuscript sources, and numerous printed variants of the maps; in addition to the tasks of transcription, collation, and translation, the editorial team will focus on furnishing Llwyd's works with the textual apparatus and commentary they require. The project aims further to generate scholarly work on Llwyd and his legacy through a symposium at the British Library and a volume of essays.

The project also aims to reach a wider audience beyond the academy. It posits that Llwyd's vision, embodied above all in his maps, is potentially accessible and engaging for members of the British public, with further specific relevance and interest for inhabitants of Wales. The project's outputs will include publicly accessible and interactive digital versions of Llwyd's maps, housed on the website of the National Library of Wales, which already employs Cambriae Typus in its outreach and educational activities. Collaborating with the Education Centre at the NLW, the project will engage school pupils and other community organizations with Llwyd's vision of Wales, using his maps and texts as a springboard to imagine the shape of Wales in the present and future. A public exhibition accompanied by public lectures at the NLW will further assist in highlighting the relevance of Llwyd's works for the present day.

The PI is a Renaissance literary scholar with an established record of work on Llwyd and his contemporaries; the two CIs have respective expertise in Welsh historiography and medieval/ early modern cartography (including digital approaches).The proposed PDRA 1, who will be responsible for the transcription, Welsh-English translation, and initial annotation of Llwyd's textual works, is an experienced scholar and editor of sixteenth-century Welsh texts. The proposed PDRA 2, with responsibility for GIS-based analysis of Llwyd's maps, is the recent recipient of a PhD in Geography with experience in the application of digital approaches to pre-modern maps.

The project will undertake extensive impact-oriented work, primarily in collaboration with the National Library of Wales. The NLW possesses the largest and most varied collection of Llwyd's works in the world, including several unique manuscripts, and an unrivalled number of different editions and variants of his maps. Llwyd's works, especially Cambriae Typus, already play a role in the Library's educational and outreach activities (eg. http://addysg.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=5143).

In collaboration with the NLW, the project will meet its impact goals through three outputs:

a) Map-based workshops. NLW education staff, supported by PDRA 1, will lead four workshops for Year 8-9 Geography pupils from Ysgol Penglais (in the medium of English) and Ysgol Penweddig (in the medium of Welsh), including visits by school groups to the Library, and follow-up outreach visits to the schools. These workshops will take Llwyd's maps (and, to a lesser extent, his topographical writings) as a starting point to stimulate explorations of the meanings of maps, and the changing shapes of nations over time. Students will be encouraged to create new art works and national and regional maps, reflecting both the present and possible futures of Wales. These workshops will generate a high direct educational impact on the children involved, and indirect impact through the generation of methods and materials that may subsequently be reused.

b) Public Exhibition. The project will convene a six-week exhibition at the National Library, showing samples of the body of work created during the educational workshops alongside maps, manuscripts and printed works by Llwyd and his contemporaries. The exhibition will be accompanied by three public lectures by members of the project team in the Library auditorium, the Drwm. This exhibition will generate cultural impact among the visitors, through their engagement both with Llwyd's works and the work of the schoolchildren.

c) Interactive digital maps. The interactive digital versions of Llwyd's maps, to be produced by CI Lilley and PDRA 2, are among the project's central outputs; hosted on the NLW website, already the chief source on the internet for images of and information about Cambriae Typus, the digital maps will generate cultural impact through enhancing engagement with early modern cartography and changing visions of Wales and Britain.

The team will seek further opportunities to engage with the media and the public, including in 2017, the 450th anniversary of the translation of the New Testament into Welsh (in which Llwyd played a key legislative role); in 2018, the 450th anniversary of Llwyd's death; and in 2019-20, with user-testing and web publication of the interactive digital resource coinciding with the completion of the project.