A Short Description of a Long Journey

John Taylor, the Water Poet, was an early tourist to Wales. As with some of his other works, the journey was paid by subscription: a proposal would have been submitted and, when enough subscribers had contributed advance payments to defray his travel expenses, the author would have undertaken the journey. In the present volume, the author travels to Chester, and thence round the coast of Wales, with a small detour over the Menai Strait to visit Beaumaris. His account is very brief, and one does wish he had described what he saw in greater detail, but what he wrote was exceedingly interesting, and, as he passes through Flint, Holywell, Rhuddlan, Bangor, Harlech, Aberystwyth, Carmarthen, and so on, he gives us a glimpse of what this then inaccessible country was like in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The terrain was, as might be expected, rugged and difficult, and at times it forced him to not only to alight from his horse, but crawl on all fours. A royalist, his hosts were typically gentlemen, but he was not always treated politely, on one occasion ending up on a muddy field, facing the prospect of a wet and uncomfortable night under the clouds. First published in 1653 to subscribers only, this short relation remained the rarest of his works, and even after republication 1859, this latter edition was limited to just 26 copies. And while modern reprints of the latter exist, the present is the first proper new edition in over 160 years.