Amelia B. Edwards

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Standard Name: Edwards, Amelia B.
Birth Name: Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards
Indexed Name: Amelia B. Edwards
Indexed Name: Amelia Blandford Edwards
Pseudonym: The Author of Barbara's History
ABE sustained a moderately successful authorial career, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century when she made the choice of writing as a profession—something she needed in order to earn a living. She was a periodical contributor (of stories, articles, and reviews of books and of art) and novelist, who also produced biography, translation, songs, anthologies, and travel literature. Her twenty or so novels were popular: their characters and situations are drawn with a broad brush and reflect in slightly cruder form the more fruitful innovations of the most original novelists of her day. She is best remembered, however, for her work in Egyptology. Her books on Egyptian subjects overlap on one side with her travel writing and on the other with her lecturing; she is still regarded as a founder of the discipline.
Black and white portrait photograph of Amelia B. Edwards, signed "Yours very sincerely, Amelia B. Edwards", 1890. She sits facing the viewer, turned slightly to her right. She wears a coat lined with fur, and a scarf over a textured blouse. Her hair is pulled away from her face, and she smiles slightly.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Matilda Betham-Edwards
Amelia B. Edwards , cousin of MBE , became known as a novelist, travel-writer, and Egyptologist.
Miles, Alfred H. The Victorian Poets: The Bio-Critical Introductions to the Victorian Poets from A. H. Miles’s The Poets and the Poetry of the Nineteenth Century. Fredeman, William E.Editor , Garland, 1986.
385
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce, 1893.
127
Matilda got to know her well while serving as a governess-pupil at Mimosa House in Peckham...
Friends, Associates Matilda Betham-Edwards
An early literary acquaintance of MBE was the playwright Joseph Stirling Coyne (known as Sterling Coyne), whom she met through her cousin Amelia B. Edwards .
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp.
130
MBE pursued a lasting friendship with Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Friends, Associates Matilda Betham-Edwards
She also rejected the patronage of a wealthy Englishwoman from whom her cousin and friend Amelia B. Edwards received help.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp.
179
Friends, Associates May Crommelin
MC 's only mentors during her early years as a novelist, whom she consulted mainly by post, were Lord Dufferin (a neighbouring landowner and talented travel writer, as well an imperial statesman), the established writer...
Friends, Associates Eliza Lynn Linton
People she met at the Laurences' house included Thornton Leigh Hunt (who, with his wife, lived at the Laurences'); Smith Williams , reader for Smith and Elder ; Robert Owen , socialist; Frank Stone ...
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Theresa Longworth
She was not the only one to find inspiration for writing in her court experience. In addition to widespread newspaper coverage and several reports of the trials themselves, other creative responses continued to appear. J. R. O'Flanagan
Reception Frances Power Cobbe
FPC 's importance to her contemporaries is most readily recalled today by the fact that Matthew Arnold thought her a worthy target of his corrective wisdom in The Function of Criticism at the Present Time...
Reception Edith J. Simcox
Susanne Stark , evaluating Primitive Civilizations in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, credits EJS with launching a substantial attack on conventional Victorian society: by alerting her readers to the fact that the prosperity...
Textual Production Matilda Betham-Edwards
During the final decade of the century MBE remained as productive as ever. She published two novels in 1891 (A North-Country Comedy and A Romance of the Wine), besides a volume of stories,...
Textual Production Eliza Cook
This was priced at only a penny halfpenny, to attract popular readership.
Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists. Macmillan, 1995.
91
It enjoyed circulation figures of 50,000 to 60,000—slightly higher than those of Dickens's Household Words—even though that was only a fraction...
Textual Production Charles Dickens
Other contributions were appeared from Mrs Alexander , Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Edward Bulwer-Lytton , Caroline Chisholm (later parodied by CD ), Wilkie Collins , Dinah Mulock and Georgiana Craik , Amelia B. Edwards ,...
Textual Production Emily Faithfull
EF also published Mary Merryweather 's Experience of Factory Life.
Fredeman, William E. “Emily Faithfull and the Victoria Press: An Experiment in Sociological Bibliography”. The Library, No. 2, pp. 139 - 64.
162
As a publisher she produced a high proportion of texts by female authors, including Frances Power Cobbe , Sarah Stickney Ellis , Louisa Twining
Travel Matilda Betham-Edwards
After her time as a governess-pupil MBE stayed for an extended period (not her first visit) with her cousin Amelia Edwards in London.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp.
128, 130

Timeline

1860s
During this decade, annuals became associated with ghost stories, exemplified in works by Amelia B. Edwards and Charlotte Riddell .
July 1889
Women's Suffrage: A Reply appeared in the Fortnightly Review to counter Mary Augusta Ward 's Appeal Against Female Suffrage in the previous month's Nineteenth Century.