EDWARDS, William Camden

1777 - 1855

William Camden Edwards was born in Monmouthshire, South Wales in 1777. In the early part of the 1800s, he came to live at Bungay in Suffolk, joining printer Charles Brightly (1762-1821) where Edwards was the engraver of many illustrations for the early works of Brightly, later being employed in later editions by Brightly & Childs. Edwards exhibited at the Norwich Society of Artists, from Bungay 1815-1819, a series of prints & engravings. After Brightly’s death in 1821, Edwards left Bungay but later returned, working on his own account as an historical engraver, and was living at Upper Olland Street in Pigot’s 1823-39 directories and Kelly’s 1846-1853. His wife died at Bungay, ‘a sufferer for three and a half years from paralysis’, on 19 June 1850, aged 80. William Camden Edwards died at his home in rooms on the Flixton Road, Bungay at 2am on 22 August 1855 and buried in Bungay cemetery five days later, the first adult to be buried there, the local newspaper gives his date of death as 23 August. A complete collection of his engravings was in the collection of Great Yarmouth banker, Dawson Turner, which are now in the British Library. (Copsey-Suffolk Book Trades 2012)

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Works by This Artist