Magazine archive goes online thanks to family bequest
A bequest from Ruth Stephens of her late husband Meic Stephens’ print archive has enabled the New Welsh Review to launch a complete digital archive.
The whole print run of one hundred and thirty-five issues is now available to individual and institutional subscribers via Exact Editions’ digital platform. Readers can now search for back issues going back to the very first issue published in 1988, with over thirty years of searchable content to explore as well as new issues as they are published.
Wales’s foremost literary magazine in English, New Welsh Review offers a vital outlet for the very best new fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, as a dynamic forum for critical debate and a rigorous reviewing culture.
Politically engaged
Meic Stephens was one of Wales most prolific writers working from the 1960s onwards. He was the founder of Poetry Wales and the first literary director of the Arts Council of Wales and chair of the Rhys Davies Trust. He wrote, edited or translated over one hundred books.
He also won awards including the Wales Book of the Year in both languages and taught creative writing at the University of Glamorgan whose students included Rachel Trezise.
Always politically engaged, he was an activist in the first Plaid parliamentary by-election victory at Carmarthen in 1966 and stood as a parliamentary candidate for Plaid Cymru in Merthyr in the general election the same year. He was one of graffiti artists behind the original ‘Cofiwch Tryweryn’ wall on the road to Aberystwyth. His son is the broadcaster and writer Huw Stephens.
Writers and thinkers in New Welsh ReviewThinkers
New Welsh Review have published some of the greatest writers and thinkers from Wales and beyond, including: Dannie Abse, Paul Muldoon, P. D. James, Emyr Humphreys, Leslie Norris, Gwyneth Lewis, Les Murray, Rachel Trezise, Niall Griffiths, Owen Sheers, Tiffany Murray, Edna Longley, Byron Rogers and Gillian Clarke.
Hosted on the Exact Editions publishing platform, the magazine and its archive can be explored with an advanced search function enabling search of any keywords, a neat stacking interface allowing for ease of browsing years and decades, as well as new issue notifications alerting readers to the availability of the next issue.
Publisher of The New Welsh Review, Richard Davies, said: “We’re delighted to bring the New Welsh Review’s historically valuable archive to such an elegant and stylish digital platform. Exact Editions’ prowess in institutional subscription sales to academic libraries has been clearly proven and we’re looking forward to seeing this in action.”
Managing Director of Exact Editions, Daryl Rayner said: “New Welsh Review is an incredibly important publication for literature in Wales, and we’re delighted to have this complete archive join an illustrious group of literary publications on our platform. The complete archive is a valuable resource in which we expect both individual and institutional subscribers to enjoy.”
Individuals can buy an annual or quarterly subscription to New Welsh Review by clicking here.
Institutions can buy a subscription or request a free trial of New Welsh Review by clicking here.
The next edition of the New Welsh Review Threshold is released now.
The New Welsh Review was founded in 1988 as a successor to The Welsh Review (1939–1948) and Dock Leaves and The Anglo-Welsh Review (1949–1987). It holds true to its original mission statement: to be dynamic, curious, lively and outward-looking, to commemorate the past but to celebrate contemporary excellence and new directions.
For more information, please visit: https://newwelshreview.com/
Exact Editions
Exact Editions is a digital publishing company based in London. It is a team of producers, developers and designers that turns periodicals and books into dynamic, user-friendly digital editions. Exact Editions specialises in digitising content, selling subscriptions and providing streaming solutions across web, iOS and Android platforms. Exact Editions is also the innovator of ‘Reading Rooms’ technology, so publishers can provide streaming, time-limited, access to digital editions.
For more information, please visit: https://shop.exacteditions.com/
Trefforest
Meic Stephens was born in Trefforest, near Pontypridd, in 1938. He was educated at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he read French, and the University of Rennes. While living in Merthyr Tydfil in the 1960s, he taught at Ebbw Vale Grammar School but moved to Cardiff in 1966 as a reporter with the Western Mail.
In 1965 he launched Poetry Wales and edited the magazine for eight years. From 1967 to 1990 he was Literature Director of the Welsh Arts Council. Appointed to a lecturer’s post at the University of Glamorgan in 1994, he was given a personal Chair as Professor of Welsh Writing in English in 2000.
Since its inception in 1971 he was the co-editor of the Writers of Wales series, and edited, translated and written another hundred books, most of which deal with the culture of Wales; they included the verse anthologies The Lilting House (with John Stuart Williams, 1969), Green Horse (with Peter Finch, 1978) and The Bright Field (1991).
His poems are to be found, with those of Harri Webb and Peter Gruffydd, in Triad (1963), and in Exiles All (1973) and Ponies, Twynyrodyn (1999); he also wrote verse in Welsh, a language he learned as an adult. He died in 2018.
Meic Stephens was a serial graffiti warrior and painted the original ‘Cofiwch Tryweryn’ slogan near Llanrhystud, an image now viewed as iconic. He is pictured carrying Gwynfor Evans aloft at his famous Carmarthen by-election victory in 1966
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