Ostensibly a geographer, the author of this work, Emyr Estyn Evans, broadened the outlook of his academic work to include a consideration of folklife, popular and material culture, and the effects of environment on the human outlook. In doing so, Evans became a cultural historian, whose geographical focus was Ireland and Atlantic Europe. This collection of his writings conveys the unrecorded history Evans devoted himself to, an account which went beyond a simple history of elites and documents.