Cwrtmawr manuscripts

John Humphreys Davies was a bibliographer whose interest in Welsh literature and culture manifested in the collection of manuscripts that he acquired from many different sources over a period of many years.

Evans also stated that despite being too modern to fall within the scope of his Report, the collection of Welsh Ballads in Cwrtmawr manuscripts are "very valuable".

[2] In 1925, Davies transferred the fifty manuscripts that Evans had catalogued (i.e. Cwrtmawr 1-50) to the National Library of Wales.

The collection is predominantly of Welsh literary interest and contains a variety of material, including religious works such as sermons and hymns, volumes of annotated press cuttings, holograph letters, diaries and journals, account books, pedigrees, commonplace books, recipes, dictionaries, music, and notes on philology and bibliography.

[3] John Humphreys Davies acquired the Cwrtmawr manuscripts over a long period of time and from many sources.

It includes manuscripts relating to each of the following: manuscript transcriber Margaret Davies (c. 1700–1785); Morris Davies (1796–1876), author, hymnologist and musician; William Davies (1805–1859); Independent minister and schoolmaster David Ellis; James Spinther James (1837-1914), Baptist historian Owen Jones, 'Manoethwy' (1838–1866); schoolteacher and writer Owen Jones (1833–1899); Calvinistic Methodist minister, writer and bibliophile Richard Robert Jones (Dic Aberdaron); Lewis Morris; Robert Prys Morris (c. 1831–1890), local historian and antiquary; John Peter (Ioan Pedr, 1833–1877), Independent minister and Welsh scholar; Hugh Pugh (1803–1868), Independent minister and schoolmaster; and Robert Williams (1810–1881), cleric, Celtic scholar and antiquary.

Peter Bailey Williams were widely dispersed after he died and John Humphreys Davies acquired them from a number of sources.

Most of the manuscripts relate to the literary and scholarly activities, and the lexicographical work in particular of Daniel Silvan Evans, with those of Rev.

There are a number of volumes of letters addressed to Evans, by scholars and literary men including John Rhys.