Owen Jones

Background

Jones was born on the Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr in Denbighshire.

Education

He had from boyhood studied Welsh literature, and later devoted time and money to its collection.

Career

In the mid-1760s he moved to London, where he entered the service of a firm of furriers, to whose business he ultimately succeeded. Assisted by Edward Williams of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and Doctor William Owen Pughe, he published, at a cost of more than £1000, the well-known Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales (1801–1807), a collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the 14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are deposited in the British Library.

The material not utilized in the Myvyrian Archaiology amounts to 100 volumes, containing 16,000 pages of verse and 15,300 pages of prose.

An edition of the poems of Dafydd ap Gwilym was also issued at his expense. He died in 1814 at his business premises in Upper Thames Street, London, and was buried in the churchyard of All-Hallows-the-Less.

Achievements

• Jones was the principal founder of the Gwyneddigion Society in London in 1770 for the encouragement of Welsh studies and literature. And in 1805 he began a miscellany, the Greal, of which only one volume appeared.

References

• A History Of The Honourable Society Of Cymmrodorion And Of The Gwyneddigion And Cymreigyddion Societies (1751-1951) Original Hardcover