Jeanie Gwynne Bettany

Jeanie Gwynne Bettany
A white woman wearing a large hat
Jeanie Gwynne Kernahan, from a 1904 publication
Born
Mary Jean Hickling Gwynne

25 January 1857
Audley, Staffordshire, UK
DiedFebruary 16, 1941(1941-02-16) (aged 84)
Other namesJeanie Gwynne Kernahan
OccupationWriter
Spouse(s)George Thomas Bettany
Coulson Kernahan

Jeanie Gwynne Bettany Kernahan (25 January 1857 – 16 February 1941) was a British novelist, sometimes publishing under the name Mrs. Coulson Kernahan after her second marriage in 1892.

Early life

Mary Jean Hickling Gwynne was born in Audley, Staffordshire,[1] the daughter of Samuel Goodland Gwynne and Jane Woolley Wright Gwynne.[2][3][4] Her father was a mathematics master at Taunton College.[5] She was educated at University College London.[2]

Career

"Trewinnot of Guy's" was her novel of 1898

Bettany wrote novels,[6] including The House of Rimmon (1885),[7] Two Legacies (1886), A Laggard in Love (1890),[8] Trewinnot of Guy's (1898),[9] Frank Redland, Recruit (1899),[10] The Avenging of Ruthanna (1900), No Vindication (1901), An Unwise Virgin (1903),[11] The Sinnings of Seraphine (1906),[12] The Mystery of Magdalen (1906), The Fraud (1907), Ashes of Passion (1909), The Thirteenth Man (1910),The House of Blight (1911), The Mystery of Mere Hall (1912), The Go-Between (1912),[13] The Stolen Man (1915), The Trap (1917), The Hired Girl (circa 1920), The Temptation of Gideon Holt (1923),[14] The Whip of the Will (1927), Tales of Our Village (1928), The Blue Diamond (1932), A Village Mystery (1934), The Woman Who Understood (1935), Devastation (1940), and The Affair of Maltravers (1949, published posthumously). With her second husband, she wrote Bedtime Stories of Make-Believe-Land (1912),[15] and Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories (1916).[16]

Bettany's short stories and poems were published in The Argosy,[17][18] Belgravia,[19] Lippincott's,[20] and Temple Bar.[21] She described her experiences of clairvoyance and premonition for the Journal of the Society of Psychical Research and other periodicals.[22][23][24]

Bettany wrote a cantata for children's voices, Elsa and the Imprisoned Fairy (1889), with music by Thomas Murby.[25]

Personal life

On 1 August 1878, Jeanie Gwynne married botanist George Thomas Bettany,[26] "a scholar and editor of high repute".[5] Their son George Kernahan Bettany was born in 1891, shortly before her husband's death. She was considered "destitute" and because of her husband's work she was given a civil list pension.[1] In 1892, the widowed Bettany married her husband's colleague, fellow writer Coulson Kernahan. Their daughter Beryl was born in 1896.[27] Jeanie Gwynne Kernahan converted to Roman Catholicism in 1898. She died in 1941, aged 84 years.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c Adams, Jad (2004). "Kernahan, (John) Coulson (1858–1943), writer and promoter of compulsory military service". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/52461. Retrieved 2021-04-07. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b Moon, George Washington (1891). Men and Women of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries. G. Routledge. p. 84.
  3. ^ Burnand, F. C. (Francis Cowley) (1908). The Catholic who's who. Kelly - University of Toronto. London : Burns & Oates. p. 225.
  4. ^ Gurney, Edmund; Myers, Frederic William Henry; Podmore, Frank (1886). Phantasms of the Living. Rooms of the Society for psychical research; Trübner and Company. pp. 194–195. ISBN 978-0-7905-7824-8.
  5. ^ a b J. A. H., "Mrs. Coulson Kernahan" The Bystander 2 (March 9, 1904): 31.
  6. ^ "Author Information: Jeanie Gwynne Bettany". At the Circulating Library. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
  7. ^ Kernahan, Coulson (1885). The house of Rimmon: a Black Country story. London: Remington.
  8. ^ Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne. (1890). A laggard in love. New York: United States Book Co.
  9. ^ Kernahan, Coulson (1898). Trewinnot of Guy's :a novel. London. hdl:2027/osu.32435012673265.
  10. ^ Kernahan (formerly Bettany), Jeanie Gwynne (1899). Frank Redland, Recruit. A Novel.
  11. ^ Kernahan (formerly Bettany), Jeanie Gwynne (1903). An Unwise Virgin.
  12. ^ Kernahan, Coulson (1906). The sinners of Seraphine. London. hdl:2027/nyp.33433074876552.
  13. ^ Kernahan, Mrs Coulson (1912). The Go-between. Everett.
  14. ^ Kernahan, Mrs Coulson (1923). The Temptation of Gideon Holt. Epworth.
  15. ^ "Bedtime Stories of Make-Believe-Land". The Times-Democrat. 1912-08-04. p. 49. Retrieved 2021-04-07 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ^ "Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories, by J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
  17. ^ Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne (1886). "A Shower of Daffodils". The Argosy. 42: 150–160.
  18. ^ Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne (May 1891). "Sweet Nancy". The Argosy. 51: 417–430.
  19. ^ Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne (1887). "A Mystery Indeed". Belgravia: A London Magazine. 63: 476–485.
  20. ^ Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne (September 1891). "Thou or I?". Lippincott's Monthly Magazine: 339 – via ProQuest.
  21. ^ Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne (November 1887). "Little Wasp". Temple Bar. 81: 403–409.
  22. ^ Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain) (August 1885). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Society for Psychical Research. p. 18.
  23. ^ Nicol, J. Fraser, "Some Difficulties in the Way of Scientific Recognition of Extrasensory Perception" Ciba Foundation Symposium on Extrasensory Perception (1956): 24. via Internet Archive.
  24. ^ Gurney, Edmund; Myers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry); Podmore, Frank; Sidgwick, Eleanor Mildred; Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain); Harry Houdini Collection (Library of Congress) DLC (1918). Phantasms of the living. The Library of Congress. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. ; New York : E.P. Dutton and Co. pp. 137–139 – via Internet Archive.
  25. ^ "Elsa and the Imprisoned Fairy". The Era. 1889-02-02. p. 12. Retrieved 2021-04-07 – via Newspapers.com.
  26. ^ Boase, Frederic (1908). Modern English Biography. Vol. IV. Netherton and Worth. p. 390.
  27. ^ Penn, Janet (2016). "George Kernahan Bettany". Canvey Island. Retrieved 2021-04-07.