Daniel Owen

Daniel Owen (20 October 1836 – 22 October 1895) was a Welsh novelist, generally regarded as the foremost Welsh-language novelist of the 19th century, and as the first significant novelist to write in Welsh.

Daniel Owen was born in Mold (Yr Wyddgrug), Flintshire, the youngest of six children in a working-class family. His father, Robert Owen, was a coal miner, while his mother belonged to the family of Thomas Edwards, poet and writer. His father and his two brothers, James and Robert, were killed on 10 May 1837 in a mining accident, when the Argoed mine became flooded. The loss impacted heavily on the family, who remained in poverty. Owen received no formal education, but he acknowledged his debt to his Sunday School.

At the age of 12, Owen was apprenticed to a tailor, Angel Jones, an Elder with the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Owen described his apprenticeship as a "kind of college", and began writing poetry after being influenced by one of his colleagues. Owen found at the tailor shop opportunities to discuss and argue topics with workers and customers.

Owen began writing poetry under the pseudonym Glaslwyn, entering his work into local eisteddfodau and succeeding in publishing some pieces. His first significant work in Welsh was a translation of Timothy Shay Arthur's novelette Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There. His translation was published in a fortnightly called Charles o'r Bala. Owen then trained unsuccessfully for the Ministry of his church, preaching from 1860. He enrolled in Bala Theological College in 1865, but failed to complete the course. From 1867 until the end of his life, he worked as a tailor in Mold, preaching on Sundays until prevented by illness.

Thereafter his mentor, Roger Edwards, suggested that he try his hand at writing instead. Owen's first attempt at fiction was a short story, "Cymeriadau Methodistaidd" ("Methodist Characters") about the election of Chapel Elders. Modest success with it led Edwards to encourage Owen to embark upon his first novel, Y Dreflan, which described a fictionalized version of Mold.

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