Robert Walter Dudley Edwards, known to his friends as Robin and his students as 'Dudley'[1][2] was born in Dublin. His father was Walter Dudley Edwards, an English journalist who came to Ireland with his wife, Bridget Teresa MacInerney from Clare, and became a civil servant.[2][3] Dudley Edwards's mother was a supporter of women's rights, a member of Cumann na mBan, and Dudley Edwards later recalled that he had a 'Votes for Women' flag on his pram.[1]
Educated first at the Catholic University School, Dudley Edwards moved first to St. Enda's School and then to Synge Street CBS, before finally returning to the Catholic University School. In his final exams he failed French and Irish but gained first place in Ireland in History.[2]
In 1933, Dudley Edwards married Sheila O'Sullivan (d. 1985), a folklorist and teacher.[4] They had three children: Mary Dudley Edwards, a teacher and civil rights activist; Ruth Dudley Edwards, a historian, crime novelist, journalist and broadcaster; and Owen Dudley Edwards, a historian at the University of Edinburgh. Robert Dudley Edwards died in 1988 in St. Vincent's Hospital after a short illness.[1]
InUniversity College Dublin, Edwards was auditor of the Literary and Historical Society, gained a first-class degree in history in 1929 followed by a first class master's degree in 1931 with the National University of Ireland prize.[2] He carried out postgraduate work at the University of London and earned his PhD in 1933, published in 1935 as Church and State in Tudor Ireland. Along with Theo Moody he founded the Irish Historical Society in 1936, and its journal Irish Historical Studies was first published in 1938.
In 1937 he was awarded a DLitt by the National University of Ireland and in 1939 was appointed to a statutory lectureship in Modern Irish History at University College Dublin. He succeeded Mary Hayden to the Chair of Modern Irish History in 1944, which he held until he retired in 1979. His contribution to the discipline of History in Ireland was substantial, and included the setting up of University College Dublin Archives Department, now part of the School of History and Archives.
The introduction to David Edwards's book Age of Atrocity records how the leading Irish history journal, Irish Historical Studies (edited by Dudley Edwards and T. W. Moody), for the first half-century and more of its existence, systematically avoided the theme of violence, killing and atrocity during the 16th and 17th centuries.
