Speaker: Tony Edwards - Lady Charlotte Guest

Our founder President, Tony Edwards, gave  us a facinating account of the life of Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest an English aristocrat who is best known as the first publisher in modern print format of The Mabinogion.

As an accomplished linguist, and the wife of a foremost Welsh ironmaster John Josiah Guest she became a leading figure in the study of literature and the wider Welsh Renaissance of the 19th century. She bore him 10 children. After his death she played a major role in the running of the Dowlais Iron Works. She married her second husband, Charles Schreiber, to leave the iron works and Dowlais and became a well known collector of porcelain; their collection is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. She was also an international industrialist, pioneering liberal educator, philanthropist and elite society hostess. All this at a time when women were barred from many professions. The pictures below show Dowlais House where she lived with her first husband and Lady Guest addressing staff and students in the school she built in Dowlais.