by Dr Marion Löffler
During the 1850s Stephens became one of the two main instigators of a Welsh orthography reform, a subject debated since the misguided efforts of William Owen Pughe. Following a meeting at the 1858 Llangollen Eisteddfod Stephens and Robert John Pryse (Gweirydd ap Rhys) circulated questionnaires that led to the publication of Orgraph yr Iaith Gymraeg in 1859, a valuable forerunner of articles on the same subject published by Sir John Morris-Jones in Y Geninen in the 1890s. These efforts ultimately led to the standard work on Welsh orthographic principles published in 1929.
Competing at eisteddfodau was a major incentive and stage for the learning and creativity of many amateur scholars in Victorian Wales and Stephens was no exception. At most eisteddfodau in which he competed between 1840 and 1858 he won, sometimes up to three prizes. His first success was in the Liverpool Eisteddfod of 1840, where he won a prize for his essay on the ‘History of the life and times of Iestyn ab Gwrgant, the last native lord of Glamorgan’. He made his name with a winning essay on ‘The Literature of Wales during the twelfth and succeeding centuries’ at the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Society Eisteddfod of 1848, which appeared a year later as The Literature of the Kymry. This first study of medieval Welsh literature conducted on the basis of modern scholarly principles was extremely well-received by international scholars, such as Matthew Arnold, Theodore Hersart de La Villemarqué, Henri Martin, Max Müller and Albert Schulz, and an acclaimed German translation appeared in 1864.
Nevertheless, and although he continued to produce scholarly essays for eisteddfodau, The Literature of the Kymry remained the only book-length study of his to be published during his life time. His five-hundred page essay on a ‘Summary of the History of Wales from the earliest period to the present time’ gained first prize at the Rhuddlan Eisteddfod, but remained unpublished due to a lack of patronage. His winning essay at the last Cymreigyddion y Fenni eisteddfod of 1853, on the ‘Remains of the Welsh Poets from the sixth century to the twelfth’, which was to be part one of ‘a complete history of Welsh literature’, remained unpublished for the same reason.
His ‘English prose translation of the “Gododdin” with explanatory notes’, also submitted in 1853, was published in 1888 as The Gododdin of Aneurin Gwawdrydd: An English Translation with Copious Explanatory Notes; A Life of Aneurin; and Several Lengthy Dissertations Illustrative of the ‘Gododdin’, and the Battle of Cattraeth, edited by Thomas Powel (1845-1922). Stephens’s last major work, ‘Madoc: an essay on the discovery of America by Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd in the twelfth century’, failed to win the competition at the 1858 Grand Eisteddfod of Llangollen, because it disproved the tale that Madoc and his followers had discovered America. The result made Stephens a martyr to truth, and the main judge and druid John Williams (ab Ithel) even more notorious than he had been. This essay was published in 1893, edited by Stephens’s neighbour and pupil Llywarch Reynolds.
Stephens turned to the periodical press as a medium of critically reviewing Welsh history in order to replace Welsh romanticism with a more scientific approach. Among his major series of critical essays are those on the romantic forger Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg) in Yr Ymofynnydd (1852-1853), on the fictional ‘Dyfnwal Moelmud’ and early Welsh law in the Cambrian Journal and Archaeologia Cambrensis (from 1854), on ‘The Book of Aberpergwm’ in Archaeologia Cambrensis (1858), and on ‘The Bardic Alphabet called “Coelbren y Beirdd”’ in Archaeologia Cambrensis (1872). Numerous shorter contributions by him appeared in newspapers like The Cambrian , The Merthyr Guardian, The Monmouthshire Merlin , The Silurian and in periodicals, such as Seren Gomer , Yr Ymofynnydd , Y Traethodydd and Y Beirniad .
Weakened by a succession of strokes, Thomas Stephens died on 4 January 1875 and was buried in the Nonconformist part of Cefn-coed-y-cymer cemetery. The funeral sermon held in his honour at Twynyrodyn Unitarian Chapel, Merthyr Tydfil, was published by request of the members, along with a list of the over 180 books in a number of languages he had bequeathed to Merthyr Tydfil Library.
His archive was donated to the National Library of Wales by his widow’s family in 1916 and is to be found at NLW MSS 904-66 .
Transcripts of the main collection of his letters were made available to the public in 2017 and may be viewed at: https://archives.library.wales/index.php/letters-534 and https://archives.library.wales/index.php/letters-889 .
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