Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Matilda Betham-Edwards
-
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.
"Matilda Betham-Edwards" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Matilda_Betham-Edwards_0001.jpg/594px-Matilda_Betham-Edwards_0001.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
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.
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
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...
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
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...
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
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
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Matilda Betham-Edwards
mentions BLSB
's essay re-afforestation essay Australian Forests and Algerian deserts, which was shown to George Henry Lewes
one day in 1868 and printed in the Pall Mall Gazette the day after...
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...
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.