An attractive volume featuring almost three hundred illustrations including photos and maps from the Royal Institution of South Wales.

The Royal Institution of South Wales (RISW) is a very special organization. It was Wales’s first-ever museum from 1841–1990, and one of the few such institutions to survive into the twenty-first century. Today it remains a thriving center of culture. Its original lecture theater, library, and laboratory demonstrate its early involvement in scientific research and education. Swansea’s Royal Institution and Wales’s First Museum is a substantial and richly illustrated book that sets the story in context—in local, national, and international terms—and presents RISW as a significant contributor to the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge. It covers the growth of RISW, the notable members it attracted, later challenges it faced, and its survival in the world of today. The formation of the museum’s many varied collections is described by leading specialists, including the developing sciences: geology, natural history, botany, archaeology, Egyptology and photography, the decorative arts, historical records, coins, maps, and costume.