Matilda Betham-Edwards

04 March 1836 - 04 January 1919

Standard Name: Betham-Edwards, Matilda

Birth Name: Matilda Barbara Edwards

Pseudonym: M. B. E.

Self-constructed Name: Matilda Barbara Betham-Edwards

Self-constructed Name: M. Betham-Edwards

Used Form: Miss Betham-Edwards

Used Form: the author of John and I

Over the course of a career spanning the later nineteenth century and the opening decades of the twentieth, MBE maintained a phenomenally high publishing output and covered most viable genres. She was best known for her novels and her travel-books about France, but she also wrote poetry and children's books, and edited and introduced the works of others. As a travel writer she is unusually sensitive to the conditions of peasant life on the land; as a novelist she draws heavily on actual experience, whether lived or observed.

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Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Birth	Amelia B. Edwards	ABE was born in or near Colebrook Row, Islington, London, the only child in her family. Matilda Betham-Edwards says near Colebrook Row; the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says in it. The street-name...
Family and Intimate relationships	Amelia B. Edwards	Matilda Betham-Edwards (who was born Matilda Edwards but adopted her mother's name as well, and who also became a writer) was ABE 's cousin. The two were close friends, and before she was grown-up, Matilda...
Family and Intimate relationships	Mary Matilda Betham	The prolific writer Matilda Betham-Edwards was her niece and god-daughter, the child of her much younger sister Barbara.
Friends, Associates	Frances Power Cobbe	FPC was a friend of Emily Faithfull , Geraldine Jewsbury , and Rosa Bonheur , and she knew Josephine Butler , Augusta Webster , Lady Battersea , Emily Pfeiffer , Anne Thackeray Ritchie , Helen Taylor
Friends, Associates	Herbert Spencer	His broad social circle included several other women writers. Frances Power Cobbe , Eliza Lynn Linton , Matilda Betham-Edwards , and sisters Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff , were all his acquaintances. Later in life...
Friends, Associates	Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon	In 1867-8 Matilda Betham-Edwards travelled with her across Europe to spend the winter in Algeria, and wrote later with gusto about the dangers encountered and surmounted on the journey. She also wrote enthusiastically about Bodichon's...
Health	Amelia B. Edwards	Her cousin Matilda Betham-Edwards believed that ABE never fully recovered from the broken arm she sustained in the USA. Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp. 132
Literary responses	George Eliot	Barbara Bodichon , encountering excerpts from the novel in Algiers, was immediately convinced it was the work of her friend—there is her great big head and heart and her wise wide views Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Haight, Gordon S.Editor , Yale University Press, 1978. 3: 56-7
Literary responses	Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon	Matthew Davenport Hill (a lawyer, member of parliament, and friend of BLSB , who had also advised in her composition of the pamphlet), brought it to the attention of the Law Amendment Society and they...
Occupation	Amelia B. Edwards	According to ABE 's cousin Matilda Betham-Edwards , Amelia began life as a professional musician, with the post of organist at Wood Green, Hornsey (not yet part of London, but in the country). Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp. 126
Occupation	Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon	Matilda Betham-Edwards later wrote that her brilliant sketches were admired by Ruskin , Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp. 270 and that her great artistic gifts were sacrificed to purely philanthropic ends. Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp. 269
Occupation	Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon	It began with half a dozen students. Although Bodichon donated time and money to the cause since 1867, she did not officially become a member of the committee until 1869. Her donation of a thousand...
Textual Features	Christina Rossetti	The internal monologue The Iniquity of the Fathers Upon the Children occupied a bridging position in this volume between the first section of secular poems, and the final shorter section of devotional pieces. Its scriptural...
Textual Production	Charles Dickens	A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens's romance about the French Revolution set largely in Paris, appeared in 1859 in several forms:first serially in his new journal All the Year Round, and, overlapping...
Textual Production	Celia Fiennes	The title seems to place the work in a tradition of intrepid Englishwoman abroad, including Emma Roberts , Matilda Betham-Edwards , Isabella Bird , Mabel Sharman Crawford , and others. Beatrice and Sidney Webb consulted...

Timeline

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.