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
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
^ a b cAdams, 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.)
^ a bMoon, George Washington (1891). Men and Women of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries. G. Routledge. p. 84.
^Burnand, F. C. (Francis Cowley) (1908). The Catholic who's who. Kelly - University of Toronto. London : Burns & Oates. p. 225.
^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.
^ a bJ. A. H., "Mrs. Coulson Kernahan" The Bystander 2 (March 9, 1904): 31.
^"Author Information: Jeanie Gwynne Bettany". At the Circulating Library. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
^Kernahan, Coulson (1885). The house of Rimmon: a Black Country story. London: Remington.
^Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne. (1890). A laggard in love. New York: United States Book Co.
^Kernahan, Coulson (1898). Trewinnot of Guy's :a novel. London. hdl:2027/osu.32435012673265.
^Kernahan (formerly Bettany), Jeanie Gwynne (1899). Frank Redland, Recruit. A Novel.
^Kernahan (formerly Bettany), Jeanie Gwynne (1903). An Unwise Virgin.
^Kernahan, Coulson (1906). The sinners of Seraphine. London. hdl:2027/nyp.33433074876552.
^Kernahan, Mrs Coulson (1912). The Go-between. Everett.
^Kernahan, Mrs Coulson (1923). The Temptation of Gideon Holt. Epworth.
^"Bedtime Stories of Make-Believe-Land". The Times-Democrat. 1912-08-04. p. 49. Retrieved 2021-04-07 – via Newspapers.com.
^"Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories, by J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
^Bettany, Jeanie Gwynne (1886). "A Shower of Daffodils". The Argosy. 42: 150–160.
^Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain) (August 1885). Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Society for Psychical Research. p. 18.
^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.
^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.
^"Elsa and the Imprisoned Fairy". The Era. 1889-02-02. p. 12. Retrieved 2021-04-07 – via Newspapers.com.
^Boase, Frederic (1908). Modern English Biography. Vol. IV. Netherton and Worth. p. 390.