Amelia Edwards 1831 – 1892
Egyptologist, writer.
7 June 1831 – 15 April 1892
Amelia Edwards, a trailblazer for contemporary feminists is a neglected personality in the history of Egyptology. Not only was she a renowned novelist and travel writer, she was a ‘Queen of Egyptology’. Edwards was founder of the Bloomsbury-based Egypt Exploration Society. Recently, scholars have uncovered the importance of Edwards’ political and personal life and how connected they were particularly her intellectual and intimate relationships with women. These findings deserve our attention. Julia Pascal
A Tribute to Amelia Edwards by Carl Graves
Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards was born in 1831 to Thomas and Alicia Edwards in Clerkenwell, London. The family later moved to 19 Wharton Street, a house now honoured with a blue plaque announcing Amelia’s connection. Here, Amelia was home-schooled by her mother where she excelled in art, music, languages, and writing. Amelia also enjoyed reading and later confessed that she was rarely without a book in her hands. She recalled how, as a child, John Gardner Wilkinson’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians fascinated her as did the tales from A Thousand and One Arabian Nights.
Amelia’s cousin, Matilda Betham-Edwards, reported that Amelia was only nine years old when she published her first piece of writing. A competition in a local journal offered a prize to the best temperance story which Amelia entered and won.
At 16, Amelia Edwards illustrated ‘The Travelling Adventures of Mrs Roliston’ [https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/80e3bb63-79f3-4505-9c4c-be8cd3d02ff0/]. Edwards created the character of an adventurer in the persona of Mrs Roliston who journeyed to Scandinavia, and Iceland. She almost froze to death in Russia, was almost eaten by a Kraken, and was offered the freedom of the city of Stockholm by opera singer Jenny Lind.
Edwards’ talent for comic sketches was rewarded when she was discovered by the editor of Cruikshank’s Omnibus. When the editor, George Cruikshank, turned up at Wharton Street to meet the artist, he was shocked to find a young girl. He offered to train her, but her parents refused. Edwards described this as ‘their old prejudice again the artist life’.
Though Edwards excelled at writing and art, she had decided, at 14, to focus on a single career path. In a letter to her friend Edward Abbott she wrote ‘In an evil hour, I chose music – for I was considered too delicate to paint in oils & become, what I most wished to be, an artist.’ She trained on the piano then organ and excelled in guitar. She also sang. However, after several years working hard to perfect her skills she stated that ‘the divine gift of music’ was not hers.
In 1851, while training to become a musician, Edwards became engaged to a Mr Bacon. Every Sunday, he would fetch her home from St Michael’s church in Wood Green after she had been playing the organ. This journey caused her to suffer anxiety attacks as she felt they were ill-suited and could not repay the affection. By the end of the year, Edwards had broken off the engagement.
Edwards ultimately ceased her ambitions for a music career after publishing the tale ‘Annette’ in 1853. By 1859, as a novelist, she had achieved financial independence and a way to support her aging parents.
Disaster struck Edwards in 1860. Within a week of one another, both her parents died. That same year, she moved in with Mrs Ellen Drew Braysher whose husband and only child had recently died. Ellen Braysher was 27 years older than Edwards. Together, they moved from London to Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol into a large, detached, home called The Larches.
The taboo area of homosexuality was an important area in Edwards’ life. It was in Bristol that Edwards must have encountered the poet John Addington Symonds, who lived at Clifton with his wife Catherine North. Symonds was a well-known supporter of gay rights in Victorian Britain and, though he was married with children, Symonds was known to have had homosexual relationships. In 1893, a year after Edwards’ death, Symonds told the sexologist Havelock Ellis,
“I had another eminent female author among my friends, Miss Amelia B. Edwards, who made no secret to me of her Lesbian tendencies. The grand passion of her life was for an English lady, married to a clergyman & inspector of schools. I knew them both quite well. The three made a menage together; & Miss Edwards told me that one day the husband married her to his wife at the altar of his church – having full knowledge of the state of affairs.”
This couple was almost certainly Ellen and John Byrne who had visited Edwards at the Larches in 1865. The relationship came to an abrupt end in 1871 when John was relocated from Bristol to London. In a letter to a Mrs Cave, Edwards wrote, ‘I shall spend the summer, autumn, and winter abroad…I suppose I shall start very soon after Mr and Mrs Byrne go away – for I must go somewhere to get over that great blow – the greatest that could befall me.’ Later she adds, ‘it is like a death blow to me’.
To escape her melancholy, Edwards travelled to Rome mixing with artists and creative minds. One of these new acquaintances was Anne Hampton Brewster, an American writer. Several letters from Edwards to Anne indicate that they had a short, but intense, relationship. Capturing the depression she felt in 1871, Edwards wrote:
‘As life goes on, one’s heart deadens and wearies from many disappointments and one ceases to look for hearts in others. My heart no longer beats faster at the sight of a new or kindly and beautiful face. I hope nothing from it. I have come to the turn in the road of life when I expect no more love, when an act of genuine kindness, or an expression of genuine interest startles me and surprises me and fills me with gratitude, but ceases to give me hope. […] At other times I am scarcely conscious of even my head & feel like a shadow moving among shadows – emotionless, passionless, unimpressed, almost without the consciousness of thought. I have to look for things in order to see them and to listen in order to hear.’
In Rome, Edwards also met Lucy Renshaw. Born in 1833, Renshaw became her travelling companion. The two women embarked on a daring adventure in 1872 across the Dolomites. Edwards wrote about this in her first travel book, Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: a midsummer ramble in the Dolomites which included her illustrations. This book combines her love of writing, art and travel. As a travel writer, Edwards made her third successful career transformation.
In her continued writing to Anne Hampton Brewster, Edwards wrote in 1873: ‘Miss Renshaw and I have taken it into our heads that we should like to see a little of the East, […] where we shall take the best Nile boat, and the best Dragoman we can find, and go up the Nile – I hope as far as the Second Cataract. It will be an affair of three or four months – and during that time we are at least sure of uninterrupted sunshine and endless sketching – to say nothing of the absorbing interest of the remains by the way.’
At the age of 41, Edwards found another career as an Egyptologist.
Edwards and Renshaw arrived in Egypt in November 1873, where they hired a dahabiyeh (a traditional Nile sailing vessel) to travel A Thousand Miles Up the Nile – the title of Edward’s travelogue published in 1876. The book narrates how they visited archaeological sites across Egypt and Nubia and the people that they encountered. Today the book would raise questions about how Edwards perceived local Egyptians.
The book became an instant bestseller and went through several editions and reprints (notably one in 2022 including an introduction contextualising the work for modern audiences: https://www.ees.ac.uk/news/treat-yourshelf-to-our-latest-book).
On her return to England, Edwards founded an organisation to stop the damage and destruction she witnessed at Egyptian monuments caused by looters, tourists, and irresponsible archaeologists. The Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) was formed in 1882 and continues to support and promote Egyptian cultural heritage today. It is based in Doughty Mews, Bloomsbury, where its offices include one of the largest publicly accessible libraries of Egyptology as well as an internationally significant archive relating to British Egyptology.
Edwards is regarded as one of the founders of British Egyptology and, on her death in 1892, also founded the first professorship of Egyptology at University College London where she also gifted her collection of Egyptian artefacts. That professorship was given, on her terms, to William Matthew Flinders Petrie. This collection today resides in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology (an institution which could easily be named the Edwards Museum on account of her donation). Edward’s sympathies for the women’s rights movement inspired her choice of UCL which, at the time, was the only university to offer women degrees on equal terms as men. The important role that women have since played in the development of British Egyptology is no doubt also related to Edward’s pioneering role in founding the field.
Edwards’ legacy in Bloomsbury continues in the relationships between the EES and UCL. Long may it continue.
Carl Graves is the Director of the Egypt Exploration Society. He completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2017 on the subject of ancient Egyptian landscape and settlement archaeology.
Further reading
The Egypt Exploration Society: www.ees.ac.uk
Bierbrier, M. L. (ed.). 2019. Who Was Who in Egyptology, 5th edition. London: The Egypt Exploration Society.
Edwards, A. 1873. Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: a midsummer ramble in the Dolomites. London: Longman’s, Green and Co.
Edwards, A. 2022 (reprint). A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, with an introduction by Carl Graves and Anna Garnett. London: The Egypt Exploration Society.
Jones, M. 2022. The Adventurous Life of Amelia B. Edwards, Egyptologist, Novelist, Activist. London: Bloomsbury.
Library Company of Philadelphia, papers of Anne Hampton Brewster: https://findingaids.library.upenn.edu/records/LCP_LCP.BREWSTER. [Last accessed 27/04/2023].
Moon, B. 2006. More Usefully Employed: Amelia B. Edwards, writer, travellers and campaigner for ancient Egypt. London: The Egypt Exploration Society.
Rees, J. 1998. Amelia Edwards: Traveller, Novelist & Egyptologist. London: The Rubicon Press.
Walther, B. 2021. ‘The Eminent Lesbian or the Passionate Spinster? Posthumous Representations of Amelia Edwards’ Love for Women’, in History | Sexuality | Law (22/04/2021), https://hsl.hypotheses.org/1650. [Last accessed 27/04/2023].
MINI BIOGRAPHY
Education
Educated at home by her mother who refused to teach her anything about homemaking.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
1872 Walked the Dolomites with a female friend, Lucy Renshaw – a sign of her fierce independence at a time when women were expected to be accompanied by men.
1873-74 Travelled in Egypt with Lucy Renshaw journeying up the Nile from Cairo to Abu Simbel inspiring her lifelong interest in preserving and protecting ancient monuments and artefacts.
1882 Co-founded the Egypt Exploration Fund, becoming joint honorary secretary with Reginald Poole. She successfully gained public support and funding for exploration and excavation work through campaign work which took her on tours of England and the US.
Vice-President of the Society for Promoting Women’s Suffrage.
Prolific writer of fiction.
Received honorary degrees from Columbia College, New York; Smith College, Massachusetts; and the College of the Sisters of Bethany, Massachusetts.
Received an English civil list pension for her services to literature and archaeology.
Issues
Suffered periods of melancholy.
Had to dress up as a man to find models to paint.
Lack of formal education (a result of her gender) meant that she was cut out of key decisions made by the Egypt Exploration Fund.
Was sidelined as archaeology became an increasingly male dominated field.
Connection to Bloomsbury
The society that Edwards founded (the Egypt Exploration Fund) met at the British Museum in Bloomsbury.
Female Networks
After breaking off an engagement in 1851, Edwards formed relationships almost exclusively with women (including living with a woman).
Active supporter of the suffrage movement, serving as Vice-President of the Society for Promoting Women’s Suffrage.
Anne Hampton Brewster, Ellen Drew Braysher, Ellen Byrne, Kate Bradbury, friend and secretary, Lucy Renshaw.
Legacy
Left part of her library and a collection of Egyptian antiquities to UCL.
Left money to establish the first Egyptology teaching position in England which was at UCL (over Oxford and Cambridge) as UCL was the only institution offering degrees to women. Her condition for this donation was that the study of Egyptology was open to men and women.
Writing/publications include:
1855 My Brother’s Wife.
1864 Barbara’s History.
1864 The Phantom Coach.
1873 Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys.
1877 A Thousand Miles Up the Nile.
1880 Lord Brackenbury.
1891 Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers.
Further reading
Ockerbloom, Mary Mark, A Celebration of Women Writers: Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards, <https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/edwards/edwards.html> [accessed 4th October 2022]
Adams, Amanda, Ladies of the Field: Early Women Archaeologists and their Search for Adventure, Vancouver; Toronto; Berkeley: Greystone Books, 2010)
Lesko, Barbara S, ‘Amelia Blanford Edwards, 1831-1892’, https://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Edwards_Amelia%20Blanford.pdf> [accessed 7th October 2022]
Janssen, Rosalind, The First Hundred Years. Egyptology at University College London 1892-1992, University College London, London 1992, 128 pp., 42 figs.