R. Geraint Gruffydd
Robert Geraint Gruffydd FLSW FBA (9 June 1928 – 24 March 2015) was a Welsh scholar of language and literature. He served as Professor of Welsh Language and Literature at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth from 1970 to 1979 and was made Emeritus Professor in 1993.
Gruffydd was born in Tal-y-bont, Ardudwy, Wales. He studied at Bangor University and Jesus College, Oxford, beginning his studies at Oxford in 1948.
After his retirement in 1993, he was President of the International Congress of Celtic Studies from 1993 to 2003 and also served as vice-president of Aberystwyth University. In 1999 he became Consultant Editor of Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, the Welsh dictionary, taking over from J. E. Caerwyn Williams.
He wrote extensively on Welsh literature, covering topics from the earliest Welsh poetry to the work of the medieval poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, the Methodist hymn-writer William Williams Pantycelyn, and 20th-century writer Saunders Lewis. His father, Moses Griffith, was the first treasurer of Plaid Cymru. He was a friend of Sheldon Vanauken at Oxford and is mentioned in Vanauken’s memoir A Severe Mercy.
Gruffydd was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1991 and was a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. A full bibliography of his publications up to 1995 appears in Beirdd a Thywysogion (1996), and a bibliography covering 1996–2015 is in Y Gair a’r Ysbryd: Ysgrifau ar Biwritaniaeth a Methodistiaeth (2019). As an editor of medieval Welsh poetry texts, he was the general editor of the Cyfres Beirdd y Tywysogion and contributed to Cyfres Beirdd yr Uchelwyr.
He passed away on 24 March 2015.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:35 (CET).