Jane Williams (Ysgafell)

Jane Williams (1 February 1806 – 15 March 1885)[1] was a Welsh writer, often known by her bardic name of Ysgafell.

She spent her youth in the family seat of Neuadd Felen, near Talgarth, where she developed an interest in Welsh history, literature and folklore, and associated with Augusta Hall, Lady Llanover.

She wrote the first article published in the first volume of the Cambrian Journal in 1854, which was her 1843 English translation of an article written in French by the German Dr Carl Meyer of Rinteln, on the philology of Celtic languages, which had won the Great Prize at the Cymreigyddion y Fenni Eisteddfod at Abergavenny in October 1842.

[2] She returned to Chelsea in 1856, where she continued to write and publish, including an 1857 book on the nurse Elizabeth Davis.

In 2020 the University of Wales Press published a biography of Jane Williams by Gwyneth Tyson Roberts.