The Vaughan Association began in the wake of a successful first Colloquium held in 1995 to mark the tercentenary of Henry Vaughan’s death on 23 April 1695. Organised and guided by Peter Thomas and Anne Cluysenaar, the Colloquium has gone on as an annual event where critical scholarship and creative writing meet and converse, exploring the work and related themes of Henry Vaughan and his priest-alchemist brother Thomas (1621-66). These seventeenth-century identical twins were shaped by their Breconshire birthplace, its hills and groves, creatures, herbs, stones, history and myths, the magical landscape of the Usk river valley that imprinted itself so firmly upon their work and imaginations. Like their childhood home and landscape, the Vaughan brothers’ experience of the civil wars, regicide and republican revolution, equally shaped their lives and perspectives. Both brothers fought in that war and experienced the loss of institutions of both church and state that resulted. The discontinuity and alienation that followed were traumatic. Defeated, the twins reinvented themselves, Henry as ‘Silurist’ and Thomas as ‘Eugenius Philalethes’. Their writings reveal the connections between identity, adversity and the creative process.
Vaughan Association Conference 2022, Brecon, Wales
Vaughan Association Conference 2022
Christopher Meredith Online Book Launch
Longtime Vaughan Association member Christopher Meredith has recently published two new books, Please, a short novel, and Still, a poetry collection. Always …
Keeping the Ancient Way, Robert Wilcher
We are excited to announce the imminent publication of Robert Wilcher’s new book, Keeping the Ancient Way, discussing aspects of the …
Vaughan 400th Birthday Online Celebration
In honour of the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Vaughan twins – Henry, the poet and physician, and …