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.
Oval photograph of Matilda Betham-Edwards, c. 1893, looking straight forward with a dreamy smile. She is wearing a high collared dress with a pendant cross, and her hair, grey in front, is arranged tightly on top of her head. Her signature is reproduced below: "Yours truly, M. Betham-Edwards".

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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.
Textual Production Mary Matilda Betham
Her niece Matilda Betham-Edwards recorded that at fourteen she sat down to answer and refute Tom Paine 's political arguments.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Six Life Studies of Famous Women. Griffith and Farran.
234
Textual Production Mary Matilda Betham
Like most of her peers, MMB maintained a lively correspondence. Some of it is reproduced in A House of Letters, edited by Ernest Betham (though he prints more letters to than from her). She...
Occupation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Matilda Betham-Edwards later wrote that her brilliant sketches were admired by Ruskin ,
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, p. vi, 354 pp.
270
and that her great artistic gifts were sacrificed to purely philanthropic ends.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 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...
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...
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...
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...
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
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...
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...
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, p. vi, 354 pp.
126
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, 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. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press.
3: 56-7

Timeline

July 1889: Women's Suffrage: A Reply appeared in the...

Building item

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.

Texts

Betham-Edwards, Matilda. A Winter with the Swallows. Hurst and Blackett, 1867.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Doctor Jacob. Hurst and Blackett, 1864.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. “East of Paris, 1902”. Project Gutenberg.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Felicia. Hurst and Blackett, 1875.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. French Fireside Poetry. Editor Miall, Bernard, George Allen and Unwin, 1919.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Half-Way. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1886.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Holidays in Eastern France. Hurst and Blackett, 1879.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. “Holidays in Eastern France, 1879”. Project Gutenberg.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Kitty. Hurst and Blackett, 1869.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda, and Thomas R. Macquoid. Little Bird Red and Little Bird Blue. Sampson Low, 1861.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Love and Mirage. Hurst and Blackett, 1885.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda, and Sarah Grand. Mid-Victorian Memories. John Murray, 1919, p. xvi; 165 pp.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. “Note by the Editor”. French Fireside Poetry, edited by Bernard Miall, George Allen and Unwin, 1919, p. 7.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Now or Never. Edmonston and Douglas, 1859.
Marteilhe, Jean. Passages in the Life of a Galley-Slave. Translator Betham-Edwards, Matilda, Blackie and Son, 1895.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, 1898, p. vi, 354 pp.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda, and Frederick William Keyl. Scenes and Stories of the Rhine. Griffith and Farran, 1863.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Six Life Studies of Famous Women. Griffith and Farran, 1880.
Young, Arthur. The Autobiography of Arthur Young. Editor Betham-Edwards, Matilda, Smith, Elder, 1898.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. The Flower of Doom. Ward and Downey, 1885, p. .
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. The Lord of the Harvest. Hurst and Blackett, 1899.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. The Roof of France. Richard Bentley and Son, 1889.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. The Sylvesters. London, 1871.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. The White House by the Sea. Smith, Elder, 1857.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. The Wild Flower of Ravensworth. 1866.