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Schreiber, Charlotte,Lady

The Mabinogion (Dover Thrift Editions: Short Stories) Paperback – April 24, 1997

by Lady Charlotte E. Guest (Translator)

4.3 100 ratings

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Composed in a golden age of Celtic storytelling in the thirteenth century or earlier, this collection of 12 Welsh prose tales is a masterpiece of European literature. Though written down in the Middle Ages, these stories are thought by scholars to be probably much older, perhaps going back to the dawn of Celtic civilization.
They fall naturally into several groups: the Mabinogion (stories) proper, composed of the four tales of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawyddan, and Math; the two short pieces The Dream of Maxen Wledig and Lludd and Llevelys; the incomparable Kilhwch and Olwen, one of the earliest Arthurian tales in Welsh; The Dream of Rhonabwy, a romantic look back to the heroic age of Britain; and the three Arthurian romances proper: The Lady of the Fountain, Peredur the Son of Evrawc, and Geraint the Son of Erbin, with their abundant evidence of Norman-French influences. Also included is Lady Guest's translation of Taliesin, the story of the famous bard. Destiny, magic, chance, knightly feats of arms, love, and betrayal — all are here in these ancient, beautifully crafted stories, sure to delight scholars, students, general readers, and any lover of myth and legend.

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Debuting in 1990, the Thrift Editions library of classic literature is a top choice for teachers, students, librarians, and recreational readers around the world. Dover’s longstanding mission of exceptional value has consistently offered excellence in classic fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry.

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Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0486295419
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dover Publications (April 24, 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780486295411
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0486295411
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.62 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,180,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #16,315 in Folklore (Books)
- #24,740 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #44,402 in Classic Literature & Fiction

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4.3 100 ratings

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Alan Lee
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Alan Lee (born 20 August 1947) is an English book illustrator and movie conceptual designer. He was born in Middlesex, England, and studied at the Ealing School of Art.
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Christopher Hawkins

Superb Bardic Tradition

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2014

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One can almost hear the wood snap and crackle in the fire, smell the thick, stout, foamy beer, and ease back into a chair as the words of the Bard, the 6th century equivalent of a multi-million selling musician and actor, echo the timeless tales of Pwyll, Peredur, and the timeless, Rhiannon. While I have not yet had the privilege to read the other translations, I have read the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram Von Eschenbach, and others. The Mabinogion pulled me in, as I felt accompanied by Geraint into the Otherworld. The concept of the Otherworld, the ties of the king and heroes to the land, and the exceeding magic of it all trumps the chivalry from the European mainland. For me, this was pure, unadulterated Arthurian lore without the pomp and circumstance of lords and ladies. Perhaps that is why the Welsh/Celts themselves moved as far from the rest of their European brothers as possible, to the very west of England. Unabashedly, I've had a lifelong fascination with Arthur. Personally, I've become disabled and have pursued this fascination to drown out the pain of daily life. Perhaps Providence has helped with my selection of reading for I am truly glad to have read this and the above works before tackling the work of Mallory. Anyone with an interest in Celtic studies, their Breton/Welsh ancestry, or even fans of fantasy, high fantasy, or Tolkien would benefit from the rich oral tradition which afforded us the gift of the collected tales found within The Mabinogion.

5 people found this helpful

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OUTPOST

The Mabinogion is the oldest collection of telling of King ...

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2016

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The Mabinogion is the oldest collection of telling of King Arthur and as such is empowered with certain authority and words of command that are the root source of legend. The translator has a deep understanding and respect for the substance of these stories and their meaning in the history of the English language and the people of those Isles. The story of Taliesin should be required reading for anyone who speak English as their first language. It should be sung by anyone who recognizes the power of the Bards.

6 people found this helpful

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Ian M. Slater

Ian Myles Slater on: More Victorian than Medieval?

Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2005

Lady Charlotte Guest was a daughter of the ninth Earl of Lindsey, and so a member of the English upper class. Born in 1812, she came to Wales as the wife of John Guest, an ironmaster and member of parliament, and while residing there began to work on translating a number of stories from medieval and early modern Welsh manuscripts, eventually published in seven volumes, 1838-1845, as "The Mabinogion." (The title is itself a mistake, but now so embedded in usage that it may never be eradicated.) It was very aristocratic way of involving herself in Welsh culture, and certainly avoided many of the grubby realities, although that may not have been what she intended.

She was not the first translator of some of the stories, and she had assistance, but, considering that she was starting from learning Welsh to begin with, her industry is impressive, and the literary success of her project well deserved -- Tennyson was only one of her admirers. The stories she translated have, with minor variations, become a canonical set: she used pretty much every example of early secular Welsh narrative that wasn't either plainly historical or clearly a straightforward translation from another language. Her version was, and is, widely read, and has helped form a vision of Welsh (and generally Celtic) literature of considerable influence -- not all of it good.

Her husband's death, and her involvement in managing his business, another extraordinary effort for a proper early-Victorian Lady, took Charlotte Guest away from medieval Welsh studies; from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. After her remarriage to Charles Schreiber (her son's tutor, another interesting story), she turned her energies in a third direction, the collection of ceramics. (To my considerable annoyance, the modern editor of her journals considered this of far, far more importance than either the iron industry or that Welsh literature stuff, and omitted much of both to make room for descriptions of buying fine porcelain ... .) She then went on to become on expert on fans, as well. Much more ladylike, I'm sure; except that she also became an authority on their construction. A really remarkable person, deserving of respect.

This is relevant because, although she lived until 1895, her work on medieval Welsh effectively came to an end a half-century before, and was that of a devoted amateur even then. The translation was not only based on poorly-edited texts, imperfectly understood: in accordance with the practice of the time, she omitted, or at least veiled in obscure phrasing, whatever she found morally offensive, and cut or expanded descriptions, and, generally produced a work that, except on the level of graceful writing, has not stood up well.

Add that early nineteenth-century Welsh studies were plagued by the hand of Iolo Morganwg, who combined real learning with a taste for fraud, and you will realize that what she says may be not only obsolete, but a good-faith repetition of falsified texts, or complete fabrications. (For example, Iolo wrote two sets of Welsh Triads to go along with the real ones; his versions are still being quoted by the unaware, the careless, and those who can't bear to give up a convenient lie.)

However, Charlotte Guest's "Mabinogion" is long out of copyright, which seems to guarantee it a place in some publishers' lists.

Editions which include at least some of the notes she provided still have some value as representing early nineteenth-century knowledge of Welsh literature in the English-speaking world. The 1906 Everyman's Library edition is an example of this approach; a small (mass-market paperback size) hardcover, based on a one-volume edition of 1877, it was almost 450 pages long. In fact, a full, critical edition of her work would probably be of great importance to Victorian studies.

The edition illustrated by Alan Lee reportedly includes Guest's notes; if so, it must be a striking combination of modern fantasy art and useful resource. Stories-only editions of the Guest translation, however inexpensive, are of much less, even dubious, value. The reader may think, "so this is what it is like," when it isn't.

Still, a searchable digital text is an enormous convenience, so long as it isn't mistaken for something definitive, or even very reliable. And a convenient paperback, like the Dover Thrift Edition, is probably a great convenience for readers of Tennyson, and a lot of early twentieth-century Celtic and Arthurian fiction (although even for this, her notes are sometimes of equal or greater importance).

For those with any real interest in the subject, three other translations are available. Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones translated "The Mabinogion" in the 1940s, and their version replaced Guest's in the Everyman's Library series in 1949. After several revisions, it remains in print, in hardcover (Knopf) and paperback (Everyman Paperback Classics). I have reviewed the paperback edition of this at some length.

More recent is Jeffrey Gantz's "The Mabinogion" for Penguin Classics (1976), which is more modern in language. Like Jones and Jones (and a now-unavailable 1929 translation), Gantz omits one of Guest's selections, "The Tale of Taliesin." He also departs from the usual spelling of some characters' names, for reasons which do not seem entirely clear. As prose, it doesn't seem to me close to Jones and Jones, and well behind Guest, but some people seem to prefer it.

Finally, we come to "The Mabinogi, and Other Medieval Welsh Tales," edited and translated by Patrick K. Ford (1977), which drops the common title, and with it three heavily French-influenced tales, and two other stories with debatable features, but restores "Taliesin," re-edited from manuscripts not subjected to Iolo Morganwg's meddling; in his version, it appears in two parts, "The Tale of Gwion Bach" and "The Tale of Taliesin." He also includes a translation of "Cad Goddeu," or "The Battle of the Trees," an unsatisfactory version of which Charlotte Guest had used in her notes. Ford's introductions are clear and informative; and he was acutely aware of the modern literary uses of the stories. (I know this last because I was taking a course from him while the translation was in draft.) The translation doesn't try to make a medieval text sound more modern than it is, but it doesn't try to make it quaint or archaic, either.

With any of these available to you, Charlotte Guest's translation will make an interesting supplement. One thing it doesn't lack is charm.

40 people found this helpful

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Deborah MacDonald

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2015

Historical work for the serious minded.

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Diana

If you're interested in the illustrations from Alan Lee, ...

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2015

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If you're interested in the illustrations from Alan Lee, the paperback version does not have them. The description of this version lists Alan Lee as one of the authors (which he is not). It would have been helpful to have known the difference (however cheap the paperback is.)

19 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Fairly good translation

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2004

Lady Guest's original version contained a large number of notes missing from this publication. In fairness, if the notes were added, the cost would increase dramatically. The notes are what makes the book.
These tales are the basis for a large number of initiation systems using the Welsh spiritual and mythological philosophy.
If you actually study the book, instead of looking for the "good parts" you will find a basic initiation ritual and magickal practice.
Good luck, it actually takes an intelligent person with patience to find the jewels.

3 people found this helpful

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CarolECI

Meh

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2016

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I thought this would be more entertaining, maybe some fresh stories from the ancient bards? I read Beowulf as a teenager and enjoyed it, so the antique language isn't a drawback. But . . . sorry - this was about as fun as chewing styrofoam. Rich king kills king in the next kingdom over. They feast. Then they kill someone else. They feast. They get acclaim. They feast. There seems to be no true concept of honor, or any good reasons for all that war, except fame and ...feasting. It reads like a list of "what I did last summer" written by a psychopath; no real color, emotion or deeper levels of meaning that I could see.
Maybe hundreds of years ago it was entertaining to read about having servants disarray you for bed (undress) - and feasting after conquering your neighbors, but not so much now, at least - in this style.

One person found this helpful

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Batmanmatrix

oral tradition of story telling that many of the fantastic and supernatural elements of the tales have come

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2016

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The book has been widely influential, giving rise to timeless literary figures such as Arthur and Merlin, and providing the basis of much European and world literature - the fantasy fiction genre, so popular today, was practically unknown before its publication.

It first came to general literary prominence in the mid 19th century, when Lady Charlotte Guest published her translation of 11 medieval Welsh folk tales under the title The Mabinogion.

The tales, which are outwardly concerned with the lives of various Welsh royal families - figures who represent the gods of an older, pre-Christian mythological order - are themselves much older in origin.

Preserved in written form in the White Book of Rhydderch (1300-1325) and the Red Book of Hergest (1375-1425), portions of the stories were written as early as the second half of the 11th century, and some stories are much older still.

It is from this older, oral tradition of story telling that many of the fantastic and supernatural elements of the tales have come.

Ironically the title, The Mabinogion, is a relatively modern one, coined mistakenly by Lady Charlotte Guest herself. The word 'mabinogion', which she assumed was the plural form of 'mabinogi', appears only once in the manuscripts she translated and is commonly dismissed as a transcription error.

'Mabinogi', derived from the word 'mab', originally meant 'boyhood' or 'youth' but gradually came to mean 'tale of a hero's boyhood' and eventually, simply, 'a tale'.

It's these first four heroic 'tales', or the four 'branches' of Pwyll, Branwen, Manawydan, and Math, which make up The Mabinogi(on) proper.

A single character, Pryderi links all four branches. In the first tale he's born and fostered, inherits a kingdom and marries. In the second he's scarcely mentioned, but in the third he's imprisoned by enchantment and then released. In the fourth he falls in battle.

The tales themselves are concerned with the themes of fall and redemption, loyalty, marriage, love, fidelity, the wronged wife, and incest.

They're set in a bizarre and magical landscape which corresponds geographically to the western coast of south and north Wales, and are full of white horses that appear magically, giants, beautiful, intelligent women and heroic men.

The title, The Mabinogion, is also used today to describe the other seven stories in Lady Charlotte Guest's collection: The Dream of Macsen Wledig, which is based on the legend of Emperor Maximus; Llud and Llefelys, a story full of fairy tale elements; Culhwch and Olwen, the earliest known Arthurian romance in Welsh; The Dream of Rhonabwy, a witty meditation on ancient Britain's heroic tradition; and three further Arthurian romances, The Lady of the Fountain, Peredur and Geraint and Enid. A 12th story, Taliesin, translated from a later manuscript, is included in some collections.

12 people found this helpful

Jojo

The original

Reviewed in Germany on December 22, 2014

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It's the original translation into English and the foreword is interesting but modern narrative format, such as a new line for a new speaker isn't adopted so it's confusing to read. Also the old school English use of V instead of F in the Welsh names grinds a little. But overall, for the price, a good compilation of the stories.

Amazon Customer

Mighty, moving and mysterious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2017

Verified Purchase

Rich, complete, moving and mysterious. No modern political correctness here, despite Lady Charlotte Guest's Victorian linguistic style. Magical encounters, devastatingly beautiful women, horrendous monsters and unflagging, wild heroism from these superb characters. Love it, truly inspiring

One person found this helpful

Dottie33

a great find

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2015

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I read about this and decided to look it up. Its quite charming and full of folklore and myth which I love.

Sea Witch

Great translation of a true classic.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 27, 2014

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Cheap and cheerful copy of a great translation of a true classic. A must have for anyone interested in Wales or Welsh legends. You will be bowled over by these amazing tales. I've been enchanted by them ever since I can recall. Being a cheap copy (paper is very thin) and very light, would be a great book to take on your travels.

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