Charles Wilkins (writer)


Charles Wilkins of Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire, was a prolific writer of historical accounts of Wales and its industries. He produced pioneering reference works on the histories of Merthyr Tydfil and Newport; the coal, iron, and steel trades of South Wales; and Welsh literature. He was also founding editor of The Red Dragon: The National Magazine of Wales.

Background

Charles Wilkins was born on 16 August 1830 in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, the second of nine children of William Wilkins, a Chartist bookseller then postmaster, and Anna Maria Wilkins. From 1840 the family lived in Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorganshire. Leaving school at the age of fourteen, Wilkins worked first as postmaster's clerk to his father, then as postmaster from 1871 until his retirement in 1898. From 1846 to 1866 he was also librarian of the Merthyr Tydfil Subscription Library of which Thomas Stephens was secretary.
Wilkins married Lydia Jeens in Stonehouse in 1859. She died giving birth to their third child in 1867. The following year, Wilkins married Mary Skipp in Topsley, Hereford; they had two children.
Wilkins was Glamorganshire secretary of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, a fellow of the Geological Society of London, and a member of the Aberystwyth College committee. He was also a member of the Loyal Cambrian Lodge, No. 110, of Freemasons, Merthyr Tydfil, from 1872 to 1885.

Historian, writer, editor

Wilkins' major works included the first histories of Merthyr Tydfil and Newport, a history of Wales, a history of Welsh literature, and histories of the coal, iron, and steel trades of South Wales.
From age fourteen, Wilkins wrote extensively over many years for the Merthyr Tydfil, Cardiff, and Swansea newspapers, including serialized versions of his books.
In 1877, Wilkins was "initiated into the mysteries of the Druidic lore", and at the 1881 National Eisteddfod, held in Merthyr Tydfil, he won a £21 prize and gold medal for the best "History of the Literature of Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire from the earliest period to the present time." His bardic name was Catwg.
In 1882, it was reported that, "after careful examination of the various works written by Mr. Wilkins", he was "unanimously elected to the super graduate Degree of Literature " by the Druidic University of America and its affiliate in Maine. However, at the time of his retirement in 1898 the degree was described as PhD, though he "never permitted the title to be made any use of".
From 1882 to 1885, Wilkins was editor and writer for the monthly periodical The Red Dragon: The National Magazine of Wales. This English language magazine published articles on Welsh history, biography, and poetry, and was a "calculated attempt to reach out to a new public literate in English but unschooled in a knowledge of Wales". Though traditional and conservative, it included women writers and displayed a "sense of admiration and affection for working people in Wales".

Death

Wilkins died on 2 August 1913 at his home in Merthyr Tydfil and was buried at Cefn Cemetery, Merthyr Tydfil.

Legacy

Except for his 1867 history of Merthyr Tydfil, reviews of Wilkins' major works were generally glowing, though not necessarily disinterested as they were published in newspapers for which Wilkins also wrote.
On his retirement in 1898, Wilkins was described as "a literary postmaster: successful editor, prolific writer, and sound historian – an Englishman with a Welshman's enthusiasm" and "a genuine Cymro by adoption". It was asserted "with great confidence that there are very few men indeed who have 'put in' more work for Wales than Charles Wilkins". He was described as "the first to write the history of Merthyr and Newport, the first to gather together the facts about the coal, iron, and steel trades of South Wales, and the first to set forth in due order the story of literature from 1300 to 1650."
In a wide-ranging survey of the literary associations of Merthyr Tydfil, given before the Merthyr Naturalists' Society in 1909, local scholar A. J. Perman highlighted "the veteran historian of Merthyr" Wilkins' work as particularly noteworthy among contemporary writers. "It is safe to say he has laid all future writers under immense obligation to his laborious efforts. They show doubtless less power of selection than of accumulation, but the facts are there in abundance,... and it is this patient gathering of local annals which makes the wide generalisations of national history possible."
Malcolm Ballin's modern study of Welsh periodicals notes that during Wilkins' editorship of The Red Dragon the magazine displayed a "sustained awareness of the pressures on the poor and a clear-sighted appreciation of the realities of working life" and treated the lives of working people in Wales "respectfully and with real interest". Wilkins' magazine continues to be valuable as a historical resource, created in the context of the "urgent need to rescue and record such traditional lore which was then rapidly fading from memory".
Wilkins was a prolific pioneer in his field and later research has demonstrated some errors and imbalances in his writings. For example, Wilkins was the chief architect of Lucy Thomas' fame as "the mother of the Welsh steam coal trade". His 1888 account gives the impression of Thomas as an enterprising woman who actively went after new markets, whereas evidence now suggests that this work was mainly conducted by her agents, particularly George Insole. Later authors have also commented on the "notorious unreliability" of some of his work. Nevertheless, Wilkins' labours have "smooth the paths of all future writers on these subjects" and his works have continued to be referenced in later academic studies.
Literary editor Meic Stephens concluded that Wilkins "endeavoured, not least in the pages of The Red Dragon,... to create in the English language a readership with sympathies like his own, and for that attempt, some fifty years before it became feasible, he deserves to be remembered".

Works

Wilkins' major historical works are:
Wilkins' other writings include: