He co-founded a London Welsh literary and cultural society.
Edwards, Owen Jones (Myfyr), and Robert Hughes (Robin Ddu o Fon), were the founders of Cymdeithas y Gwyneddigion or the Venedotian Society, in 1770.
Sion Ceiriog, as Edwards was called, wrote an awdl (ode) for the meeting of the society on Saint David's Day, 1778.
[1] Edwards received an honorary medal from the Society of Gwyneddigion in 1780 for a blank-verse elegy to a fellow poet, Richard Morris.
John Jones (Jac Glan-y-gors) contributed memorial verses to the Geirgrawn of June 1796 and wrote: "To the memory of John Edwards, Glynceiriog, in the parish of Llangollen, Denbighshire, who was generally known as Sion Ceiriog, a poet, an orator, and an astronomer, a curious historian of sea and land, a manipulator of musical instruments, a true lover of his country and of his Welsh mother tongue, who, to the great regret of his friends, died and was buried in London, September 1792.