Jane Hughes (poet)

Jane Hughes (25 June 1811 - 1880) was a Welsh poet and hymnist. She wrote under the pen name Deborah Maldwyn.

Hughes was born in Pontrobert, Powys on 25 June 1811 the third child to writer and Calvinist minister John Hughes and his wife, maid Ruth Evans. Hughes was baptised in her fathers chapel, Capel Uchaf Pontrobert by the recent minister who had been ordained only the month before. Ruth worked for the hymn-writer Ann Griffiths at Dolwar Fach. Hughes began writing in about 1846. Hughes parents died in the 1850s after which she began to travel around Wales. She followed Methodist meetings and sold her religious ballad sheets to earn her living. Though she published a number of hymns they were not particularly successful, often being too long and heavy for singing. Hughes also published her poems on these sheets. She became well known and had two collections of her works published in 1877. Hughes died in Porthmadog in 1880.[1][2][3][4][5]