5: Walking in the footsteps of vacationing Romanovs: The National Library of Wales Part One

When I had finished everything I could do at the British library, it was time to move into Philips’s own backyard: Wales. I took the bus to “Aber” as it is affectionately known: Aberystwyth. It’s a good-ish long train and then bus journey from London through trees that completely cover tiny country roads. At the Library of Wales, my reception from our comrades-in-books was different yet again.

I stayed at the YWCA, a hostel where the water in the bathroom was controlled with a coin paybox. I had an enormous wardrobe straight out of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

And if that isn’t enough, the University of Wales in Aber has a library science program whose degree is recognized in the States. I was not to miss their library either!

Aberystwyth is home to the National Library of Wales, a super, super, super cool library. It is profoundly beautiful. In addition, finally reaching it after climbing a really, really big hill with 40 pounds of research materials on your back three days in a row is profoundly beautiful, too.

At the National Library of Wales a simple photo ID was all it took to use the materials – And wasn’t it nice that I’d come all the way from the United States to research Katherine Philips? Interest in her sure had picked up. What part of the States was I from? Ah, yes, the Great Lakes region. Lovely, lovely. We’re so happy that interest in our national poets is picking up.

At the National Library of Wales I found the goldmine of my research on 17th century poet Katherine Philips: her personal copybook.