# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Edwards, Owen Morgan

​EDWARDS, Sir OWEN MORGAN (1858–1920), man of letters, the eldest of the four sons of Owen Edwards, of Coedypry, Llanuwchllyn, Merionethshire, by his wife, Elizabeth Jones, was born at Coedypry on Christmas Day 1858. The scene of his childhood, beautiful in itself, and romantic in its associations, left upon the mind of Owen Edwards a profound impression. His intense love of nature and his sense of humour he derived from his father; from his mother came the felicity and aptness of diction which, with personal qualities of his own, form the groundwork of his literary style.
The foundations of Edwards’s real education were laid in his home and in the activities of his nonconformist chapel. He began his more formal education at the Church of England village school, where for a time he was also a pupil-teacher. Later, he went to the grammar school at Bala, and from there to the theological college in the same town. During his last year at the college he acted as lecturer and, under the persistent pressure of influential friends, he joined the ministry of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. In the course of his journeys as an itinerant preacher he acquired a very intimate knowledge of Welsh life and thought and social conditions. From Bala he went in 1880 to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, whence he took his London B.A. degree. Subsequently, he spent one session (1883-1884) at the university of Glasgow. In 1885 he was elected a Brackenbury scholar in modern history at Balliol College, Oxford. He won the Stanhope essay prize in 1886, and in 1887 obtained the Lothian prize and a first class in modern history. After spending a year in France, Germany, and Italy, he came back to Oxford to teach. He was soon appointed lecturer in modern history at Corpus Christi and Trinity Colleges, and later at Balliol and Pembroke. In 1889 he was elected a tutorial fellow of Lincoln College, a position which he held till 1907. He remained an honorary fellow of the college until his death.
In 1899 on the death of Tom Ellis, M.P., Edwards was chosen, unopposed, to represent his native county of Merioneth in parliament, but he had no taste for politics and he resigned his seat in 1900. His views on Welsh nationalism began to take form in his undergraduate days at Oxford. He was one of the founders and the dominating influence of the Dafydd ap Gwilym Society. Later, he found an outlet for his views in journalism. He ​was joint-editor of the short-lived periodical Cymru Fydd (1890), but resigned when it became too political in character. In August 1891 he launched his own monthly Cymru, and in 1892 Cymru’r Plant, a monthly magazine for children, both of which he continued to edit to the day of his death. In 1895 he founded Y Llenor, a quarterly, and he also edited Wales, a magazine in English. In 1889 there appeared O’r Bala i Geneva, a book of travel, so written as to strike an entirely new note in Welsh prose; it was followed in rapid succession by others full of that charm of style which captured the imagination of Welsh readers. The principal work that he published in English was Wales (1901) in the ‘Story of the Nations’ series. Besides his own personal contribution to Welsh literature, Edwards published cheap reprints of the Welsh classics (Cyfres y Fil, and others), ranging from Dafydd ap Gwilym to Ceiriog. He did more than any other man to revive Welsh as a literary language. He was knighted in 1916 ‘for his services to Welsh literature’.
Edwards’s two main interests in life were education and Welsh culture. He reported on ‘the state of education in Wales’ to the committee of the Privy Council on education, before the first charter of the university of Wales was granted in 1893. He was a member of the royal commission which reported in 1918 before the granting of the second charter. In 1907 he became chief inspector of education for Wales under the Board of Education. As chief inspector he was an untiring administrator; but he was also the prophet of a new ideal of education. His conception of Welsh nationalism as based on culture and entirely exempt from political and sectarian partisanship, was peculiarly his own, and he made it effective.
In 1891 Edwards married Ellen, daughter of Evan Davies, of Prys Mawr, Llanuwehllyn. They had two sons and one daughter. His wife died in April 1919. That blow, together with the heavy burden of his work, hastened his death, which took place at Llanuwchllyn on 15 May 1920.
[The Times, 18 May 1920; Oxford Magazine, 11 June 1920; personal knowledge]
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