biography
| name: |
Williams, Edward
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| |
known as Iolo Morganwg
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1747–1826)
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| biography:
| Poet and antiquary, born in Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan, S Wales, UK. He worked there as a stonemason, and became a poet in Welsh and English. He had links with 18th-c Radicalism, mingling its ideas with Romantic exaltation of the Welsh past, and established neo-Druidic cults and celebrations in Wales from 1792. He published collected poems purportedly by the 14th-c poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, which in fact were his own work. He co-edited The Myvyrian Archaeology (3 vols, 1801–7), and a vast corpus of cultural material from the Welsh past with varying degrees of authenticity. A brilliant forger whose deceptions far outlived his own time, his work helped to revive Welsh culture. |
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