Planet Books

Words With Pictures - £19.95

Welsh Images and Images of Wales in the Popular Press 1640-1860
by Peter Lord.

For over a hundred years the essence of the popular press has been the combination of words with pictures. In this book, the historian Peter Lord examines both the image of Welsh people created by the popular press in England, and the work of the popular press in Wales itself.
By the mid-seventeenth century, the hostile stereotype of the Welsh person - poverty stricken, dishonest, treacherous and smelly - was well established, though interest waned as first the Scots and then the Irish took the xenophobic brunt. Printing in Wales was banned until 1694, but although the home-grown popular press made a late start, it expanded rapidly to take a place of great importance in Welsh culture.
The author traces the development of pictures in association with ballads and religious songs, the illustration of periodicals, the emergence of political satire, and the pioneering work of engravers such as Hugh Hughes and James Cope.