George Eliot and George Henry Lewes [q.v.]. She also travelled widely, especially in France, where she lived in French families, made many friends, most of them in republican and anti-clerical circles in the provinces, and in interpreting the land and its people to her own countrymen did services which were recognized in 1891 by her appointment as officier de l’instruction publique de France. From 1884 onwards she lived a retired life at Hastings, where she died on 4 January 1919.
Miss Betham-Edwards was always proud to remember that Charles Dickens accepted her first verses, The Golden Bee, and published them, not as she herself said, in Household Words, but in All the Year Round (vol. iii, p. 108, 1860). Her literary reputation, however, rests upon her prose writings. She had not imaginative power of the highest order; but she had a natural gift for story-telling, combined with close observation and a retentive memory. She made repeated use, always with freshness, of a comparatively narrow range of material—recollections of Suffolk, strong anti-clerical and other prejudices, lasting enthusiasm for certain persons and certain books, and above all an intense attachment to France. She felt it her duty to hold aloof from political or other interests which might distract her from her writing, imposed upon herself a rigid rule of life, and was thus able to achieve an enormous output. When in 1917 she kept the ‘diamond jubilee’ of her literary life, there were only eight out of the preceding sixty years which had not seen her produce at least one new book or new edition. Her first novel, The White House by the Sea, appeared in 1857, herald of a long series in which Dr. Jacob (1864), Kitty (1869), and Lord of the Harvest (1899) are perhaps the best known. French Men, Women, and Books (1910) and Twentieth-Century France (1917) may be named among her numerous books on French subjects. She edited the Travels in France (1889) and the Autobiography and Correspondence (1898) of Arthur Young [q.v.], endeared to her by his Suffolk birth. Her own personality and the influences which most affected her are frankly revealed in her Reminiscences (1898) and Mid-Victorian Memories (1919), though the biographical details are sometimes difficult to follow.
[The Times, 7 January 1919; Miss Betham-Edwards’s Reminiscences; personal sketch by Sarah Grand, prefixed to Mid-Victorian Memories; private information.]
EDWARDS, Sir OWEN MORGAN (1858–1920), man of letters, the eldest of the four sons of Owen Edwards, of Coedypry, Llanuwchllyn, Merionethshire, by his wife, Elizabeth Jones, was born at Coedypry on Christmas Day 1858. The scene of his childhood, beautiful in itself, and romantic in its associations, left upon the mind of Owen Edwards a profound impression. His intense love of nature and his sense of humour he derived from his father; from his mother came the felicity and aptness of diction which, with personal qualities of his own, form the groundwork of his literary style.
The foundations of Edwards’s real education were laid in his home and in the activities of his nonconformist chapel. He began his more formal education at the Church of England village school, where for a time he was also a pupil-teacher. Later, he went to the grammar school at Bala, and from there to the theological college in the same town. During his last year at the college he acted as lecturer and, under the persistent pressure of influential friends, he joined the ministry of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. In the course of his journeys as an itinerant preacher he acquired a very intimate knowledge of Welsh life and thought and social conditions. From Bala he went in 1880 to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, whence he took his London B.A. degree. Subsequently, he spent one session (1883-1884) at the university of Glasgow. In 1885 he was elected a Brackenbury scholar in modern history at Balliol College, Oxford. He won the Stanhope essay prize in 1886, and in 1887 obtained the Lothian prize and a first class in modern history. After spending a year in France, Germany, and Italy, he came back to Oxford to teach. He was soon appointed lecturer in modern history at Corpus Christi and Trinity Colleges, and later at Balliol and Pembroke. In 1889 he was elected a tutorial fellow of Lincoln College, a position which he held till 1907. He remained an honorary fellow of the college until his death.
In 1899 on the death of Tom Ellis, M.P., Edwards was chosen, unopposed, to represent his native county of Merioneth in parliament, but he had no taste for politics and he resigned his seat in 1900. His views on Welsh nationalism began to take form in his undergraduate days at Oxford. He was one of the founders and the dominating influence of the Dafydd ap Gwilym Society. Later, he found an outlet for his views in journalism. He
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