Edwards, AMELIA BLANDFORD

Edwards, AMELIA BLANDFORD, was born in London, 7th June 1831. Her first novel, My Brother's Wife (1855), was followed by a dozen others, among them Debenham's Vow (1869) and Lord Brackenbury (1880). She also published a volume of Ballads (1865), and, besides books of holiday travel in Belgium and the Dolomites, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877). Miss Edwards was the founder and honorary secretary of the Egyptian Exploration Fund, and wrote many papers on Egyptology. She died 15th April 1892.—Her cousin, MATILDA BARBARA BETHAM-EDWARDS, was born at Westerfield, Ipswich, in 1836, and when quite a young girl attracted the notice of Charles Dickens, who published her poem, 'The Golden Bee,' in All the Year Round; it is included in her poems (1885). Her first novel, The White House by the Sea, appeared in 1857, Dr Jacob in 1864, and Kitty (described by Lord Houghton as 'the best novel he had ever read') in 1869. Miss Betham-Edwards has also published A Winter with the Swallows (1867) and A Year in Western France (1875), whilst she has edited Murray's Handbook to Southern, Eastern, and Central France, and Arthur Young's Travels in France, with Life (1889).