1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Jones, Owen (antiquary)

JONES, OWEN (1741–1814), Welsh antiquary, was born on the 3rd of September 1741 at Llanvihangel Glyn y Myvyr in Denbighshire. In 1760 he entered the service of a London firm of furriers, to whose business he ultimately succeeded. He had from boyhood studied Welsh literature, and later devoted time and money to its collection. Assisted by Edward William of Glamorgan (Iolo Morganwg) and Dr. Owen Pughe, he published, at a cost of more than £1000, the well-known Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales (1801–1807), a collection of pieces dating from the 6th to the 14th century. The manuscripts which he had brought together are deposited in the British Museum; the material not utilized in the Myvyrian Archaiology amounts to 100 volumes, containing 16,000 pages of verse and 15,300 pages of prose. Jones was the founder of the Gwyneddigion Society (1772) in London for the encouragement of Welsh studies and literature; and he began in 1805 a miscellany—the Greal—of which only one volume appeared. An edition of the poems of Davydd ab Gwilym was also issued at his expense. He died on the 26th of December 1814 at his business premises in Upper Thames Street, London.