Daniel Owen

Daniel Owen (20 October 1836 – 22 October 1895) was a Welsh novelist. He is generally regarded as the foremost Welsh-language novelist of the 19th century and the first significant novelist to write in Welsh. Early life 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 when the Argoed mine became flooded. The loss impacted heavily on the family, who remained in poverty. Owen received little formal education, but he acknowledged his debt to his Sunday School. Owen, aged 12, was apprenticed to a tailor, Angel Jones, an elder in the Calvinistic Methodist Church. Owen described his apprenticeship as a "kind of college", and began writing poetry under the influence of a colleague there. Owen found there chances to discuss and argue topics with colleagues and customers there. Early writings Owen began writing poetry under the pseudonym Glaslwyn, entering his work into local eisteddfodau and managing to publish 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. This came out fortnightly as 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.