Amelia Edwards – författare

Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards was born on 7th June 1831 in Islington, London. She was educated at home by her mother and showed early promise as a writer, publishing her first poem at the age of 7 and her first story at 12. Thereafter came a variety of poetry, stories and articles in several periodicals, including Chambers''s Journal, Household Words, All the Year Round, the Saturday Review and the Morning Post.

In addition, Amelia became an artist. She would illustrate some of her own writings and also paint scenes from other books she had read. This talent was not supported by her parents, who saw art as a lesser profession and an artist’s life as scandalous.

Amelia also took up composing and performing music until a bout of typhus caused throat damage. Other interests she pursued included pistol shooting, riding and mathematics.

Early in the 1850s, Amelia began to focus exclusively on writing. Her early novels were well received, but it was ‘Barbara''s History’ (1864), a novel involving bigamy, that established her reputation. She estimated that it took her about two years to complete the research and writing of each.

Amelia also had a talent for the ghost story and many, including the ‘The Phantom Coach’ (1864), would be served up as magazine fare and are anthologized to this day.

In January 1851, Amelia became engaged to a Mr Bacon, it seems to please her parents, but broke it off some months later. In reality her emotional attachments were almost exclusively with women. From the early 1860s she lived with Ellen Drew Braysher, a widow 27 years her senior and was her companion until both women died in early 1892. Another in Amelia’s life was Ellen Byrne, the wife of a pastor and school inspector, whom she engaged in a relationship with during the late 1860s. The relationship ended when the husband was assigned a different school district and the couple moved away.

Amelia first heard about the Dolomites in 1853, through sketches brought back to England from Italy. On 27th June 1872, she embarked on a trip through the mountains with her friend Lucy Renshaw. At the time the Dolomites were described as terra incognita and few had never heard of them. Many of her journeys were later described by her in her work.

Amelia, again accompanied by Lucy, toured Egypt in the winter of 1873 and found a life-changing interest in Egyptology. Aware of increasing threats to ancient monuments from tourism and modern development she became an advocate for research and preservation of them.

To advance the Fund''s work, Amelia largely abandoned other writing in favour of Egyptology. In addition, Amelia took on a strenuous lecture tour in the United States in 1889–1890. The lectures later appeared as ‘Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers’.

After catching influenza, Amelia Edwards died on 15th April 1892 at Weston-super-Mare. She was 60.

She was buried in Henbury, Bristol, where her grave is marked by an obelisk with a stone ankh at the foot. In 2016, Historic England listed the grave as Grade II, and as a landmark in English LGBT history.

Amelia bequeathed her collection of Egyptian antiquities and library to University College London, with a sum of £2,500 to found an Edwards Chair of Egyptology which had a huge influence on developing Egyptology as a discipline and earned her the nickname of ‘The Godmother of Egyptology’.

Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards was born on 7th June 1831 in Islington, London. She was educated at home by her mother and showed early promise as a writer, publishing her first poem at the age of 7 and her first story at 12. Thereafter came a variety of poetry, stories and articles in several periodicals, including Chambers''s Journal, Household Words, All the Year Round, the Saturday Review and the Morning Post.

In addition, Amelia became an artist. She would illustrate some of her own writings and also paint scenes from other books she had read. This talent was not supported by her parents, who saw art as a lesser profession and an artist’s life as scandalous.

Amelia also took up composing and performing music until a bout of typhus caused throat damage. Other interests she pursued included pistol shooting, riding and mathematics.

Early in the 1850s, Amelia began to focus exclusively on writing. Her early novels were well received, but it was ‘Barbara''s History’ (1864), a novel involving bigamy, that established her reputation. She estimated that it took her about two years to complete the research and writing of each.

Amelia also had a talent for the ghost story and many, including the ‘The Phantom Coach’ (1864), would be served up as magazine fare and are anthologized to this day.

In January 1851, Amelia became engaged to a Mr Bacon, it seems to please her parents, but broke it off some months later. In reality her emotional attachments were almost exclusively with women. From the early 1860s she lived with Ellen Drew Braysher, a widow 27 years her senior and was her companion until both women died in early 1892. Another in Amelia’s life was Ellen Byrne, the wife of a pastor and school inspector, whom she engaged in a relationship with during the late 1860s. The relationship ended when the husband was assigned a different school district and the couple moved away.

Amelia first heard about the Dolomites in 1853, through sketches brought back to England from Italy. On 27th June 1872, she embarked on a trip through the mountains with her friend Lucy Renshaw. At the time the Dolomites were described as terra incognita and few had never heard of them. Many of her journeys were later described by her in her work.

Amelia, again accompanied by Lucy, toured Egypt in the winter of 1873 and found a life-changing interest in Egyptology. Aware of increasing threats to ancient monuments from tourism and modern development she became an advocate for research and preservation of them.

To advance the Fund''s work, Amelia largely abandoned other writing in favour of Egyptology. In addition, Amelia took on a strenuous lecture tour in the United States in 1889–1890. The lectures later appeared as ‘Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers’.

After catching influenza, Amelia Edwards died on 15th April 1892 at Weston-super-Mare. She was 60.

She was buried in Henbury, Bristol, where her grave is marked by an obelisk with a stone ankh at the foot. In 2016, Historic England listed the grave as Grade II, and as a landmark in English LGBT history.

Amelia bequeathed her collection of Egyptian antiquities and library to University College London, with a sum of £2,500 to found an Edwards Chair of Egyptology which had a huge influence on developing Egyptology as a discipline and earned her the nickname of ‘The Godmother of Egyptology’.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

This mid-century decade is fuelled with energy, industrial expansion, new sciences and huge changes in society. The people are hungry for information, for better rights, for better times. Literature of every sort becomes both cheap and available. Popular periodicals are sold on every corner. Everything is changing. The authors here help document this change.

Men and women have many wild fears that are very unlikely to ever come true except perhaps in a dream that lurches into a nightmare that seems so real that it must be real.

Perhaps being a fellow traveller in a coach or a train carriage and realising, whether in a sudden jolt or a slowly rising uneasy feeling of horror, that your fellow occupants might not actually be from this world, but more probably from the next, would be such a situation.

We delighted to now put you in such good company! Indeed Amelia Edwards, E F Benson, Violet Hunt, Rudyard Kipling and the incisive talents of many others would definitely like you along for the ride.

The Phantom Rickshaw by Rudyard Kipling

The Phantom Coach by Amelia Edwards

The Coach by Violet Hunt

Passenger From Crewe by Frederick Cowles

Room For One by Frederick Cowles

The Murder in an Omnibus by Harold Begbie

The Bus Conductor by E F Benson

The 9.30 Up-Train by Sabine Baring-Gould

The cliché is of the artist starving in his garret. Be it poet or author it seems romantic but lacks somewhat in the comforts and quality of life.

Somewhat better then to live and write in perhaps the Classical Cultural centre of the world; Italy. A gloried land that sates the appetite yet something increases its ambition and its yearning for further reach. Being an English author in a new and different culture seems to work its magic when these two are placed together in the same spot with a rich vocabulary; ideas seem more fully formed and characters have another edge to their existence. For the outsider looking in, more can be revealed and shared with ourselves.

Some of the authors joining us are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edith Wharton, F Marion Crawford, Frank Stockton and Vernon Lee.

Almost always when we think of Ghost Stories, we first think of those written by the Victorians.

When you consider the depth of literary talent available over the extraordinary length of Queen Victoria’s reign, allied to the fascination with their all things spiritual on ‘the other side’, then perhaps it’s simply right place, right time.

Whatever the reasons given or proffered the reality and known facts are that if you want a really good ghost story to bring that edge of chill, that foreboding of dread, that feeling that in an empty house we are not quite alone and that sometimes the sharp, sheer shock of what just happened is upon us then look no further than ‘The Victorian Ghost Story’ for your reading and listening pleasure.