JOIN Cardigan writer David Lloyd Owen for the launch of his latest book, 'A Wilder Wales: Travellers' Tales', on Thursday, November 23 from 7pm at Rhosygilwen, Rhoshill, Cilgerran.

Entry is free and there will be a question and answer session as well as readings from the book.

On Saturday, November 25, from 11am until 1pm the author will be at Awen Teifi, High Street, Cardigan, signing copies of the book published by Parthian Books. From midday he will be reading selected extracts from it.

‘A Wilder Wales’ is an edited collection of highlights from 39 accounts by 37 authors written or published between 1610 and 1831, recalling travellers’ experiences and describing the land and people.

Writers vied with each other to unearth intriguing customs and local mannerisms, while seeking to draw broader conclusions about human nature from their sundry observations. Their obsessions ranged from naked bathing to superstitions.

One writer, a Mrs Morgan on her way to Tenby, nearly faints with shock when confronted with six-foot wide beetles. She had not seen coracles before.

Few people visited Wales until the second half of the 18th century. This changed after a shift from regarding mountains as objects of fear to viewing them as places of awesome beauty.

The Napoleonic Wars of 1799-1815 forced those seeking to go on a Grand Tour of Europe’s classical sights and sites to find enlightenment closer to home.

Unlike most of Scotland or Ireland, language formed a border more immediately tangible than Offa’s Dyke or any county boundary. Outside the boroughs, churches, gentry houses and the plantations of the Gower and South Pembrokeshire, the people were overwhelmingly Welsh speakers.

‘A Wilder Wales’ takes the reader along the start of the most rapid era of industrialisation and urbanisation in human history. The pace of change is shown by an account of the Rhondda Valleys as one of Wales’ most remote and deserted places as recently as 1803-04.