1838 in Wales

Incumbents

• Prince of Wales - vacant
• Princess of Wales - vacant

  Events

• October - John Frost joins the Chartist movement.
• Newly created baronets include Sir John Josiah Guest, Sir Benjamin Hall and Sir John Edwards.
• John Cory of Devon opens his chandlery near the Custom House in Cardiff.
• Thomas Gee joins his father's printing business.
• Tinplate manufacture at Ystalyfera begins.
• Wrexham Infirmary established.
• Foundation of the Bangor Church Building Society.

  Arts and literature

• A major eisteddfod is held at Abergavenny.

  New books

• Sir Henry Ellis - Registrum vulgariter nuncupatum "The record of Caernarvon"
• Lady Charlotte Guest begins publication of her translation into English of the Mabinogion.
• Isaac Williams - Thoughts in Past Years
• Jane Williams - Twenty Essays on the Practical Improvement of God's Providential Dispensations as Means to the Moral Discipline to the Christian

  Visual arts

• J. M. W. Turner paints a watercolour of Flint Castle.

  Births

• 14 April - John Thomas, photographer
• 8 December - Charles Gresford Edmondes, clergyman and teacher
• 27 December - James Conway Brown, musician

  Deaths

• 23 January - Pascoe Grenfell, industrialist and politician, 76
• 14 March - Wyndham Lewis, MP, 57
• 19 July - Christmas Evans, preacher, 71
• 26 August - Sir John Nicholl, politician and judge, 79
• 18 September - Griffith Williams, poet, 69
• 26 December - Julia Ann Hatton, novelist, 74