Cambrian Pictures

Ann Julia Hatton (1764-1838), effectively banished to the south Wales coast after a series of scandals (and several years in 1790s America), found a powerful new identity in Swansea in the early nineteenth century. Formerly a poet and librettist, Hatton turned novelist, publishing at least fourteen novels in the later part of her life under the name 'Ann of Swansea'. These popular works, which range from historical fiction to modern satire to novels of nation and manners, are now being reappraised. A younger sister to the renowned actors Sarah Siddons and John Kemble, Hatton’s precarious existence gifted her a sharp perspective on contemporary life – one that embraced and critiqued Wales in equal measure. There is a Swansea Blue Plaque dedicated to Ann.

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.
30th in the Welsh Women’s Classics series, an imprint that brings out-of-print books in English by women writers from Wales to a new generation of readers.