Mary Jane Evans (3 February 1888 – 25 February 1922) was a

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

teacher, preacher and actress, best known for her solo recitations and dramatic monologues.

Biography

She was born Mary Jane Francis at

Godre'r Graig Godre'r Graig is a village and an electoral ward of Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales. The village developed alongside the coal workings at the Tarenni Colliery, which closed in 1949. In 2008 the community came together at a public meetin ...

. Her mother was Mary Ann Francis (née Hutchings) and her father, Charles Francis, was the conductor of

Ystalyfera Ystalyfera is a former industrial village and community in the upper Swansea Valley, on the River Tawe, about northeast of Swansea. It is an electoral ward and a community in the unitary authority of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, comprising a re ...

's town band. As a girl, she won many competitions for

recitation A recitation in a general sense is the act of reciting from memory, or a formal reading of verse or other writing before an audience. Public recitation is the act of reciting a work of writing before an audience. Academic recitation In a ...

at local

eisteddfod In Welsh culture, an ''eisteddfod'' is an institution and festival with several ranked competitions, including in poetry and music. The term ''eisteddfod'', which is formed from the Welsh morphemes: , meaning 'sit', and , meaning 'be', means, a ...

au, sometimes using the pseudonym "Llaethferch" ("milkmaid") because she delivered milk in her home district. She was sent to a private college in Carmarthen, run by Joseph Harry. After school she did some teaching, and was sent for a time to the Royal Academy of Music in order to improve her command of the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

, which was little used in her day-to-day life in Wales. She married a musician, William David Evans, in 1919, and they made their home at Maerdy in the Rhondda valley. Later in life she became an adjudicator at the National Eisteddfod. Her hectic schedule of personal appearances placed a strain on her fragile health, and she died at the age of 34. Her body was returned to Godre'r Graig for burial. A memoir of Mary Jane Evans, titled ''Llaethferch. Er Cof'' (in

) was edited by Ben Davies, who had been the minister at her chapel, and was published at Ystalyfera in 1923.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Evans, Mary Jane 1888 births 1922 deaths Welsh stage actresses Monologists 20th-century Welsh women educators 20th-century Welsh educators 20th-century Welsh actresses People from Neath Port Talbot Elocutionists