About Us

Since its establishment in 1994, Celtic Studies Publications has published scholarly monographs, book series and edited essay collections primarily focused on the languages, literatures and civilizations of the early Celtic peoples. Its over-riding concern is to promote the development of Celtic Studies in a contemporary interdisciplinary context. The three volumes, to date, in the Celtic Studies from the West series, for example, explore the innovative idea that the Celtic languages originated in the Atlantic Zone during the Bronze Age. Its chapters argue both for and against this paradigm shift, approaching their topic from various perspectives – archaeological, philological and informed by genetics. Tartessian, a related series, presents the argument that some of the earliest written records of Europe, from the Early Iron Age in the south-western Iberian Peninsula, can be read as inscribed in an Indo-European and specifically Celtic language. Other publications issued by the Press include, for example, a new edition of Edward Lhuyd’s Archæologia Britannica, celebrating the volume’s 300th anniversary, and The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe & Early Ireland & Wales, now in its fourth edition and including a wealth of Greek and Roman, early Irish, Hiberno-Latin and Brittonic sources in translation.

John Koch, the Director of the Press, a graduate of Harvard University, has since 2007 held a personal chair at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth, Wales. He is the author of groundbreaking volumes, such as The Gododdin of Aneirin and the acclaimed five-volume Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia and An Atlas for Celtic Studies, both of which he not only edited and co-authored, but also co-designed.

In the early 2000s Celtic Studies Publications, after it had moved its base to Wales, was re-entitled CSP-Cymru Cyf. The Llyfrau Cantre’r Gwaelod series is an offshoot of CSP-Cymru Cyf., established in 2016 with the aim of bringing back into print lost Welsh literary classics from the nineteenth century. Its volumes incorporate a scholarly edition of the original texts, with an accompanying introduction. Jane Aaron, the series editor, Emeritus Professor at the University of South Wales, can be contacted at jane.aaron@southwales.ac.uk