Literary Atlas Wales

The big Literary Atlas Wales project appears now to have finished, and the essential data is all on the web site.  It has been a peculiar exercise, partly geographical and partly literary, largely focussed on 12 selected novels which are probably the standard texts examined in literature courses in the Welsh universities.  (The locations for these are shown by red dots on the map above.)  We can argue till the cows come home about whether these 12 texts are "representative" of English-language literature written or based in Wales -- but they were not chosen to give visitors a cross-section or a rounded impression of what makes Wales tick.  As we can see, none of the 12 novels was based in west Wales -- a strange omission since Pembs and Carms are not exactly literary deserts......

But "literary tourism" does not seem have been the objective of the organizers of the project -- and it's interesting that Visit Wales does not seem to have been associated with the project at all.  There will be varying opinions on whether £500,000 of taxpayers' money has been well spent.  Was the project really innovative and worthwhile, or was it an academic indulgence?

This is a statement of the objective of the project:

Literary Atlas is an interactive online atlas of English-language novels set in Wales.

Literary Atlas also includes maps which locate the main geographical locations of all English-language novels in the Welsh collections of Cardiff University, Swansea University, and the National Library of Wales. Explore these locations.

Literary Atlas includes 'distant' maps and 'deep' maps which locate all geographical references (or 'plotpoints') in twelve English-language novelsprimarily set in Wales.

Literary Atlas includes artistic 'maps' of these twelve novels which offer unique and provocative interpretations of what we might call the 'literary geographies' of these books.

Literary Atlas includes maps which locate all the blue writer's plaques which commemorate the links between particular geographical sites and famous Welsh writers.

Through using 'distant', 'deep' and 'artistic' variations on mapping, Literary Atlas hopes to stimulate new understandings of literature and place and the geographical nature of the human condition.
Anyway, there is some interesting material on the web site, particularly associated with the "library map."

http://www.literaryatlas.wales/en/library/#library

As we can see, 571 "Welsh" novels were published between 1800 and 2019.  That's quite an impressive output.  On the interactive map you can click on any dot and see the author and title.  But Wales's literary output was very slow to start with, since only 16 novels were published between 1800 and 1900:

After 1990, things started moving, with 315 novels published between 1900 and 2000:

And the rate of publication speeded up even more after the year 2000, with no less than 254 novels published in the first nineteen years of this century. 

 

There are plenty of talking points here; and I imagine that there are scores -- if not hundreds -- of other English-language fiction titles written and published in Wales that do not appear on any databases or in the publishing catalogues of the main publishers.  Many self-published or small press titles are omitted.   However, to their credit the organizers of the project have said that if readers or authors send in the details, other titles can be added to the database and the map.

One interesting question relating to the 254 novels (at least) published since 2000 -- in the era of subsidies and publishing grants. How many of these modern titles are truly commercial, in that reasonable numbers of people actually buy them and read them?  Another interesting map would be one showing sales figures for the titles plotted -- but perhaps that would be too much to ask........