Jeanie Gwynne Bettany | |
---|---|
Born | Mary Jean Hickling Gwynne 25 January 1857 Audley, Staffordshire, UK |
Died | February 16, 1941 | (aged 84)
Other names | Jeanie Gwynne Kernahan |
Occupation | Writer |
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.
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]
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]
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]