Melin Bapur is a new publisher on the market, and it’s incepted to sell books through a print-on-demand model. The publisher aims to publish a diverse range of books with a primary focus on nurturing classic Welsh literature. The publisher will publish new editions of Welsh classics and make the literature available which has long been available in book form only.

The founder, Adam Pearce says:

“I had the idea for Melin Bapur when reading Alan Llwyd’s wonderful biography of T. Gwynn Jones. Gwynn’s greatness as a poet is undisputed, but one of Llwyd’s points is that Gwynn was also a major voice in the development of the novel in Welsh, writing some ten novels of extremely high quality, many of which only ever appeared as serialisations in magazines, often anonymously, and even the ones which appeared as books have been hard to find for many years now.”

Among the volumes with which Melin Bapur are launching their new Llyfrgell Cymraeg series are two novels by T. Gwynn Jones, Lona, his own favourite of his novels, a love story inspired by E. B. Yeats, and Gorchest Gwilym Bevan, a social novel about a strike in the quarries and which argues for workers’ rights.

Melin Bapur also hopes to explore publication of translations of world literature into Welsh. Adam Pearce says:

“Languages the world over translate books regularly, yet despite there being a great many translators working professionally in Wales I’ve often encountered people who think we don’t need to bother ‘translating books into Welsh, particularly from English, and particularly literature for adults. I suppose people think that people would rather read the originals; but I think this misses the point of why people might want to read a book at all, especially reading in Welsh. There are probably a lot of people out there who like the idea of reading in Welsh, but don’t know what to read, so offering them something familiar can be a gateway that gets them used to reading in the language.”

Also, Melin Bapur availas Pearce’s own translation of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Y Peiriant Amser, which is the first time any novel by H. G. Wells has been available in Welsh.

Melin Bapur is an independent publisher, which doesn’t receive any public money. You can buy their books online via their official website, or from all common online bookstores.