The Welsh Collection

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh purchases thousands of dollars’ worth of books about Wales every year. Why do we, a public library system in a mid-size American city, have such a robust collection of Welsh books? An early Pittsburgh petroleum tycoon named John Worthington (1848-1918) ensured through endowments and donation of his personal library that his birth country would always be well represented in the Library’s collection. As we continue to uphold John Worthington’s charge, the Library is committed to highlighting new, interesting, and diverse voices from Wales. Check out some of our latest additions to the collection below!  


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Celtic Weird: Tales of Wicked Folklore and Dark Mythology

In this volume, Johnny Mains dives into the archives to unearth a hoard of twenty-one enthralling tales imbued with elements of Celtic folklore, ranging from the 1820s to the 1980s and including three weird lost gems translated from Gaelic. 


Fox Bites

Set in Zimbabwe during the early 2000s, a dark coming-of-age horror fantasy about pain, loneliness, and stepping back from the abyss.


I, Eric Ngalle: One Man's Journey Crossing Continents From Africa to Europe

Eric Ngalle thought he was leaving Cameroon for a better life… Instead of arriving in Belgium to study for a degree in economics he ended up in one of the last countries he would have chosen to visit–Russia. Having seen his passport stolen, Eric endured nearly two years battling a hostile environment as an immigrant while struggling with the betrayal that tore his family apart and prompted his exit. 


I Think We're Alone Now

This is a book that runs on failure, and also a book about failures: of language to do what we want, of connection to be meaningful or mutual, and of the analytic approach to say anything useful about what we are to one another. 


This Common Uncommon

Using her nature poet’ s eye for detail and treading in the footsteps of the original poet of the commons, John Clare, Howells brings to life the story of this threatened land. Her poems ring with passion for this wild place, recording the many rare plants and animals that will be lost if the common is developed. 


Tir: the Story of the Welsh Landscape

In Tir – the Welsh word for ‘land’ – writer and ecologist Carwyn Graves takes us on a tour of seven key elements of the Welsh landscape, such as the ffridd, or mountain pasture, and the rhos, or wild moorland. 


Wild Cherry: Selected Poems

This book contains love poems and poems of desire, lyric poems and public poems for public spaces, occasional poems that transcend their occasions, merciless satires, and poems that borrow epic voices, whether of bravado or lament, and retool them for today’s challenges. 


Woman's Wales?

Looking as much to the future as it does to the past, the collection questions whether the Welsh Government has delivered on its promise to build a ‘ feminist government’ for Wales and poses the question, what has devolution really meant for women in Wales? 


Work, Sex and Rugby

A bitterly intelligent and gruesomely funny journey through the worlds of work, sex, and rugby. Lewis Davies ruthlessly dissects a passion on a four-day odyssey through the pubs, bedrooms, and building sites of a smoldering town.