Daniel Owen

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 chances to discuss and argue topics with colleagues and customers there.

Owen began writing poetry under the pseudonym Glaslwyn, entering his work into local eisteddfodau and managed 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 in the Methodist journal 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. Later his mentor, Roger Edwards, suggested 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. Its modest success led Edwards to encourage Owen to embark on a first novel, Y Dreflan, which described a fictionalized version of Mold.

Although Y Dreflan was popular in its time, Owen's reputation rests mainly on three later novels, particularly Rhys Lewis and its sequel Enoc Huws. There he again explored a fictionalized version of Mold and its Methodist chapel culture, blending comedy with satire and psychological introspection. His work has been compared with that of Charles Dickens, who was a likely influence, although Owen's work is uniquely informed by his own Welsh-language culture and chapel background.

• Deng Noswaith Yn y `Black Lion` (1859) • Offrymau Neilltuaeth (1879) • Y Dreflan (1881) • Rhys Lewis (1885) • Y Siswrn (1886) • Enoc Huws (1891) • Gwen Tomos (1894) • Straeon y Pentan (short stories) (1895)