Amelia Edwards

Amelia Edwards as a young woman about 1860

Amelia Ann Blanford (sometimes also: Blandford ) Edwards (born June 7, 1831 in Islington , London , † April 15, 1892 in Weston-super-Mare , North Somerset ) was an English novelist, poet, journalist, travel writer, illustrator and amateur - archaeologist . She campaigned for the preservation of Egyptian antiquities, was co-founder of the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) (today: Egypt Exploration Society ) and made possible the establishment of the first chair for through her legacyEgyptian archeology and philology in Great Britain and the opening of the Petrie Museum in London.

Life

Childhood and youth

Amelia Edwards was the only daughter of the former officer and bank clerk Thomas Edwards (1786-1860) and his wife Alicia Walpole (d. 1860), a native of Ireland. She was the cousin of the travel writer Matilda Betham-Edwards , who spent two weeks in her childhood holidays with the Amelia Edwards' family and later also traveled with her. Her parents discovered her talent early on and supported her within the scope of the possibilities of a medium-sized family. She was tutored at home first by her mother and then by private tutors and developed a special interest in literature and art very early on. Even as a child she read a lot - “The Manners and Customs of the Ancients Egyptiens” by John Gardner Wilkinson was already one of her favorite books back then - and illustrated everything she read. She wrote her first poem at the age of seven. Although some of her stories were published in magazines as early as 1845, she decided to pursue a musical career. She was appointed organist at St. Michael's, Wood Green , Middlesex in 1850, at the age of 19 . After several months of typhoid fever in 1849, she suffered from persistent sore throats that also affected her voice. That and her engagement in 1851, which she entered into even though she had actually sought a relationship with another man, led to the first major turning point in her previous life in 1852: she quit her position as organist and broke off the engagement. For the next two years she gave music lessons during the day and translated Italian poetry in the evening.

Later life and travel

Amelia Edwards lived with them in her parents' house until the death of her parents, who died seven days apart in 1860. As the only daughter of a couple at an advanced age, she was able to contribute to the family 's income since the first paid publication in 1853 of one of her short stories in "Eliza Cooke's Journal" . Edwards is described as adventurous and travel-loving, thirsty for knowledge and interested in many things; her own earnings enabled her to travel from around 1853. She toured Europe - first Paris, Belgium, then the Rhine, France, Germany and Italy. During her stay in Rome in 1857, she made the acquaintance of the sculptor Harriet Hosmer (1830–1908) and the actress Charlotte Cushman (1816–1876) and her temporary partner, the writer Matilda Hays (1820–1897). She was to have a lifelong friendship with Cushman. Edwards stayed in Paris for a long time and visited the bohemian cafés there , where artists and writers met. On her travels she was initially accompanied by relatives and later by her friend Lucy Renshaw (1833–1913), whom she had met on one of these trips. Lucy Renshaw later appears in her books as the fictional character "L." She had another close friendship with the painter and world traveler Marianne North , whom she had met through her brother-in-law, the writer John Addington Symonds, who was also a friend of Edward's .

She later processed the experiences and impressions that she had gathered on her early travels not only in travel literature, but also in her novels, short stories and poems. By the mid-1860s she had published five novels as well as several short stories, essays and ballads and was able to live on her income as a writer. The full employment of women was also an exception in the then Great Britain.

Amelia Edwards was still interested in art and visited various studios and courses of the local artists during her stays in Rome. She spent the winter of 1870/1871 in Rome and during this stay attended, among other things, a course on Parcival Balls , an English sculptor who worked temporarily in Rome, and commissioned a bust from him. The marble bust created later was exhibited in the Royal Academy of Arts in 1874 and then passed into Edward's possession.

Edwards lived in her parents' house until 1864. The British organization English Heritage listed the house in 2015 and put a blue plaque on it. With Ellen Drew Braysher (1804-1892), widowed since 1863 and whose daughter Sarah had died in June 1864, she bought the house The Larches in Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol in the same year . They had a very close relationship until their death in 1892. The Larches was destroyed by bombs in World War II . However, the location has been marked with a commemorative plaque from the Egypt Society of Bristol since 2011 .

Edwards was Vice President of the Bristol & West of England National Society for Women's Suffrage, founded in 1868 .

Journalist and novelist

During one of her trips to Paris, Amelia Edwards made the decision to work exclusively as a writer in the future. Her short stories, poems and short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including B. Chamber's Journal , in Charles Dickens in Household Words and All the Year Round published. As a journalist, she had a permanent job with newspapers such as B. the Saturday Review and the Morning Post . Edwards also wrote music, art, and literary reviews.

Amelia Edwards wrote a total of nine novels, several ghost stories and three children's books, including a travelogue in 1862 ( Sights and Stories: A Holiday Tour Through Northern Belgium ). Your ghost stories are now part of the Victorian ghost novels . Her first full novel, My Brother's Wife , appeared in 1855 and was well received. With Barbara's History (1864), a novel about bigamy, she was able to establish her reputation as a novelist. Her last novel, Lord Brackenbury , published in 1880, reached 20 editions and was the only fictional work that she wrote after starting her commitment to Egyptology. She also contributed approximately 300 biographies to the Photographic Historical Portrait Gallery (Colnaghi). In the 1850s she wrote Histories of England for schools (London and Boston, 1857) and History of France (London, 1858).

Travelogues

Amelia Edwards wrote two travel reports, some of which are still known today: Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys (1873) and A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877). Both books are characterized by the fact that they contain a mixture of scientific and artistic / literary travelogues as travel reports . Up to that point in time, the scientific travelogue was predominantly a male domain.

Journey through the Dolomites

Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys described Edwards' and Renshaw's journey through the then little-known Dolomites . It was her aim in this book to present the history, botany and geology / geography of the Dolomites as well as the art, culture, customs and traditions of the inhabitants. For this reason, Edwards deviated from the usual procedure at the time of hiring travel companions from their own country of origin and hired only locals for their group. Through her many years of writing experience and the mixing of (popular) scientific parts with narrative sections (she described, for example, her first ascent of Sasso Bianco and the house where Titian was born ), her book appealed to a broad educated middle-class audience and quickly became a success. However, she was still denied recognition from scientific circles.

1000 miles on the Nile

Book cover “A Thousand Miles up the Nile” 1891

In 1873 she went on a trip to Egypt in the company of Lucy Renshaw and her domestic servant, which was to change her future life. From Cairo she traveled up the Nile on a Dahabiya to Abu Simbel . There she spent six weeks digging at the temple of Ramses II.

Abu Simbel drawn by Amelia Edwards in 1870

She also writes about changing perceptions of her travel group:

“At first shocked, they reject the whole system of excavation of the burial sites with horror, both legally and predatory. However, they then develop a taste for the scarabs and grave goods and soon begin buying the remains of the dead. After all, they forget all previous scruples and want to discover a grave themselves and confiscate its contents. "

Edwards notes with regret:

“... The murals that we had the pleasure to admire in all their beauty and freshness are already badly damaged. That is the fate of every Egyptian monument, large or small. The tourists scratch their names and dates, in some cases even with caricatures. The Egyptology student wipes away the original color with his wet sponge for the paper copy. The "collector" buys and takes whatever of value he can get and the Arab steals for him. The work of destruction continues. There is no one to prevent it, there is no one to discourage them. Every day more inscriptions are destroyed, more paintings and sculptures defaced. "

While working on her book, she took expert advice from both Samuel Birch and Reginald Stuart Poole of the British Museum and from Gaston Maspero in Paris, for whom she would later translate his books. It should be her greatest success. This book, A Thousand Miles up the Nile , made her famous and rich almost overnight.

Promotion of archeology in Egypt

When Edwards returned to England, she was determined to promote Egyptian archeology. The field of Egyptology was still in its infancy in England and was mainly practiced by amateurs. She consulted with experts, trained herself in Egyptology, learned to read hieroglyphics and made contacts with young Egyptologists such as Gaston Maspero and Flinders Petrie .

Additional motivation was a letter from the young Swiss Egyptologist Édouard Naville , which had appeared in the Morning Post in 1879 and pointed to the urgent need for foreign support for archaeological explorations in Egypt. The current work under Auguste Mariette could no longer be carried out due to his poor health and financial difficulties of the Egyptian state. Edwards decided to help attract financial assistance. With Reginald Stuart Poole, Head of the Coins and Medals Department at the British Museum, she worked out plans for a foundation to preserve the buildings and promote excavations in Egypt. It addressed itself to the general public as well as to scientific and ecclesiastical circles. She found support for her proposal from the Archbishop of Canterbury , some bishops, the chief rabbi, the poet Robert Browning and Sir Erasmus Wilson , who had paid for the transport of the obelisk in Trafalgar Square from Egypt to London. Together with Naville, she wrote to Mariette that they were collecting money for his plans. However, Mariette died in 1881, and Gaston Maspero succeeded him in Cairo as head of the Service des Antiquités . Maspero asked Edwards if she could find a young English archaeologist who would like to lead excavations in Egypt.

Establishment of the Egypt Exploration Fund

In 1882 the Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) was founded. Founding members were Amelia Edwards, Reginald Stuart Poole and Sir Erasmus Wilson; Edwards and Poole were together the honorary secretaries.

Erasmus Wilson supported the foundation with 500 pounds, which enabled Édouard Naville to travel to Tell el-Maschuta in January 1883 . At the Foundation's first general meeting on July 3, 1883, the accounts showed sufficient balance to send a copy of Naville's report (the first memoir ) to all donors . This resulted in a procedure that has been continued to this day: The aim of the foundation was to publish the results of the work within a year and to provide members with free copies of the publications. The Egyptian finds remained in the country as the property of the Bulaq Museum; however, the Egypt Exploration Fund was allowed to keep two pieces from the first expedition: the votive statue of a falcon and that of a man named Ankhkherednefer. The specimens were given to the British Museum and are now on display in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. Amelia Edwards wrote numerous articles about the expedition, not least with the aim of attracting new sponsors.

In the fall of 1883, Flinders Petrie was posted to Tanis , an area associated with the biblical city of Zoan . Petrie brought a considerably larger number of objects from this trip than Naville did the previous year. In October 1883 the committee therefore decided that in addition to the gift to the British Museum, a shipment should go to the Boston Museum. Other pieces went to museums in Bristol, Bolton, York, Liverpool, Sheffield, Edinburgh and Geneva (Naville) as well as to the Charterhouse School .

In the third year (autumn 1884) the Egypt Exploration Fund was able to send both Naville and Petrie to the Nile Delta. They were accompanied by the young Egyptologist Francis Llewellyn Griffith , who held a grant from the foundation.

Edwards presented Petrie's work in Tanis in 1884 to the Congress of Orientalists in Leiden. In 1885 Petrie discovered Naukratis . In 1886 Naville found the great temple of Bubastis , which Edwards also presented at the Orientalist Congress in Vienna. In 1889 she attended the Congress in Stockholm. Edwards had made a name for herself beyond Egyptological circles through her articles on Egypt, which have since appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica , the London Illustrated News and Harpers Weekly .

In 1889, Francis Llewellyn Griffith proposed the establishment of a new epigraphic branch (epigraphy = research into the inscriptions) of the foundation, which would include all monuments in Egypt within two years. Although hopelessly optimistic, the proposal was enthusiastically welcomed and the establishment of the Archaeological Survey of Egypt was decided. Percy E. Newberry was the first to be posted to Beni Hassan in the winter of 1890 , and in October 1891 Howard Carter's contract as tracer and assistant to Newberry was signed with an annual salary of £ 50.

Amelia B Edwards in America in 1890

Lecture tour in America and honors

In the winter of 1889-1890 Edwards was invited to a lecture tour in the United States. The trip was organized by William Copley Winslow , one of the leading supporters of the EDF in America. A total of 30 presentations were planned within 60 days, including at universities and at the New England Women's Press Association. She was accompanied on this trip by her friend Kate Bradbury (1854-1902). The lectures were published in 1891 under the title "Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers".

Edwards received honorary degrees from Columbia University in New York City, Smith College in Massachusetts, and the College of the Sisters of Bethany in Topeka, Kansas.

The withdrawal

Her frequent absences gradually made more and more decisions about the Foundation's work in the Foundation's subcommittee at the British Museum (of which Edwards was not a member) rather than the Executive Committee (of which she was a member). Flinders Petrie complained unsuccessfully to Reginald Poole about this development and later stated in his memoir: "Poole and Newton cut out the founder, Miss Edwards."

Her presence at decisions was made difficult by health problems: In 1890 Amelia Edwards was diagnosed with breast cancer. The operation went well so that she was able to continue her lecturing and work for the Fund in moderation; however, her general health deteriorated so radically that Kate Bradbury wrote to Flinders Petrie at Christmas 1890:

"Yesterday I took my dear Miss Edwards as far as Birmingham on her way to Bristol that she might do her Xmas duty to Mrs Braysher's threadbare & exacting life. And now she is away from me for the first time since I joined her in London last July. I shall go to her in a week. She is very weak & entirely helpless, & the weight of my heart about her wakes me at night. She has been here a good deal & lastly for a month, making this the center of a Northern lecturing tour whereby she has repaid herself for the operating surgeon's fee. "

An intermittent recovery was short-lived. Amelia Edwards died in Weston-super-Mare on April 15, 1892, shortly after she was awarded an annual pension of £ 75 under the Civil List Act of 1837 for her services to science. She was buried next to Ellen Braysher; her executor was Kate Bradbury.

From her estate, a chair in Egyptology was donated at the University of London , the first holder of which, according to Edwards' last will, was Flinders Petrie .

Publications (selection)

• My Brother's Wife. (1855)
• The Young Marquis. (1857)
• A Summary of English History. (1858)
• Sights and Stories. (1862)
• Barbara's History. (1863), online .
• The North Mail. (1864)
• Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites. 1873, online .
• A thousand miles up the Nile. (1876), online .
• Lord Brackenbury. (1880)

Works translated into German

• The night coach of the Nord-Post Translated and with an afterword by Heiko Postma . JMB-Verlag, Hannover 2013, ISBN 978-3-944342-11-5 .
• A thousand miles on the Nile: Amelia Edwards' journey to Egypt 1873/74. Translated by Gerald Höfer. Phoibos-Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-85161-010-9 .

Literature (article basis)

• Joan Rees: Amelia Edwards, traveler, novelist & egyptologist . Rubicon Press, London 1998, ISBN 0-948695-61-7 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Amelia Edwards in the catalog of the German National Library
• Amelia Edwards in the Gutenberg project
• Amelia Edwards on the Internet Archive
• Biography and Bibliography on A Celebration of Women Writers . (English)
• Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards at the National Portrait Gallery
• Theme tours in the Petrie Museum London with Amelia Edwards theme tour (PDF 266 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. u. a. Brenda Moon: More Usefully Employed. Amelia B. Edwards, Writer, Traveler and Campaigner for Ancient Egypt. Egypt Exploration Society, London 2005
2. ↑ Introduction . Retrieved April 6, 2016, from : ucldigitalpress.co.uk / Petrie Museum .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Barbara S. Lesko: Amelia Blanford Edwards, 1831-1892. Biography as part of the project "Women in Old World Archeology". From: brown.edu ( Brown University website ) accessed on April 7, 2016 ( full text as PDF file; 30 kB ).
4. ↑ Deborah Manley: Edwards, Amelia Ann Blanford (1831-1892). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, Online , doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 8529 .
5. ↑ Brenda Moon: More Usefully Employed , pp. 35ff.
6. ↑ Brenda Moon: More Usefully Employed , pp. 76ff.
7. ↑ Brenda Moon: More usefully employed , S. 65th
8. ↑ Portrait ABE on: npg.org.uk (website of the National Portrait Gallery ); Retrieved April 20, 2016
9. ↑ Amelia Edwards' Blue Plaque . From: york.ac.uk (website of the University of York ) March 26, 2015, accessed April 10, 2016.
10. ↑ Aidan Dodson. Amelia Anne Blandford Edwards (1831-1892). Department of Archeology & Anthropology. University of Bristol (2011), Online ( Memento from April 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 239 kB)
11. ↑ See: Suffragettes .
12. ^ The Dahabiya ( Memento October 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). On: nile-dahabiya.com ; last accessed on April 22, 2016.
13. ↑ Amelia Edwards: A Thousand Miles up the Nile. Routledge, London 1891, pp. 51-52.
14. ↑ Amelia Edwards: A Thousand Miles up the Nile , p. 353.
15. ↑ Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards . Article by Amelia Edwards in Harpers Magazine . On: harpers.org ; last accessed on April 22, 2016.
16. ↑ Brenda Moon: More usefully employed , S. 222nd
17. ↑ Brenda Moon: More usefully employed , S. 234f.
18. ↑ Kate Bradbury to Flinders Petrie, Christmas 1890, cited above. n.Brenda Moon: More Usefully Employed , p. 236.
19. ↑ Brenda Moon: More usefully employed , S. 241st
20. ^ Joan Rees: Amelia Edwards , p. 69.