Four Ancient Books of Wales

These manuscripts were, for the most part unknown, until the publication of Archaeologia Britannica by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, which was also the first instance of these books being grouped together. Then, in the mid eighteenth-century, due in part to the Ossianic controversy, there was an increase in interest in Welsh poetry, which led to several subsequent publications of collections of Welsh poetry. Notable ones amongst these include Some Specimens of the Poetry of the Antient Welsh Bards by Edward Evans (1764), History of the Anglo-Saxons by Sharon Turner, The Literature of the Kymry by Thomas Stephens (1849), and Taliesin: Or the Bards and Druids of Britain by David William Nash (1858). The last two of these were the first to provide literary analysis of the poems. The culmination of these publications set the foundations for the publication of the Four Ancient Books of Wales. == Addition manuscripts ==

Since the term was first coined, scholars have suggested additional manuscripts be added to the list due to their historical prominence. One such manuscript is the Hendregadredd Manuscript. At the time when Skene compiled his collection, the Hendregadredd Manuscript was lost and it was not discovered until 1910, when it was found at the bottom of a wardrobe. Chardwick argued that, by the addition of the Hendregadredd Manuscript, it, as an artefact, was "by far the most revealing of [the] five books", also calling it the "most valuable palaeographical repertory of the Welsh Middle Ages". The National Library of Wales supported the suggestion for the inclusion of the Hendregadredd Manuscript, as well as proposing the inclusion of the White Book of Rhydderch due to its similarity with the Red Book of Hergest and its inclusion of the earliest complete Mabinogi. ==References==