Welsh writer and educator who greatly influenced the revival of Welsh literature and the development of Welsh national consciousness.

After attending colleges in Wales and Scotland, he studied history at Oxford University until 1887. As a teacher of modern history at Oxford (1889–1907), he founded and edited three Welsh magazines for popular circulation. He was knighted in 1916.

Though a scholar himself, he wrote books in a natural, charming, lucid style that reached a universal Welsh audience. They were often descriptive works dealing informally with Welsh regions, manners, history, and character, or comparisons of Welsh life and life abroad, such as O'r Bala i Geneva (1889; “From Bala to Geneva”). His major work in English was Wales (1901). Edwards also published inexpensive reprints of Welsh classics. As chief inspector of Welsh education (1907–20), he tirelessly worked to secure the study of Welsh culture in the Welsh schools.