Dunstan, Angela

English

Kent Academic Repository

DICEY, EDWARD JAMES STEPHEN (1832-1911)  Edward James Stephen Dicey, the second son of Thomas Edward Dicey the Midland Railway pioneer and proprietor of the Northampton Mercury, was born in Claybrook, Leicestershire, on 15 May 1832. Dicey’s mother, Anne Mary, was sister of Sir James Stephen and aunt of Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. Educated at home, King’s College London and Trinity College Cambridge, Dicey graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1854 before briefly and unsuccessfully entering business. He then took up journalism, writing for The Spectator from 1860. The following year Dicey published Rome in 1860 and Cavour: a Memoir after travelling in Europe, and these publications helped establish his credentials as a political commentator. Dicey began writing for the Daily Telegraph in 1861, and he was soon made a permanent member of staff. Dicey began his career in special correspondence with coverage of the American Civil War in 1862 for the Spectator and Macmillan’s Magazine. He spent six months in the northern states of America during 1862, before spending another six months in the south in 1863. During this time, he was also a student of Gray’s Inn from the mid-1860s and was called to the bar in 1875 though he rarely practiced law. He wrote for the Daily Telegraph both as a special and a leader writer on foreign affairs from 1862-8, and covered the Schleswig-Holstein War (1864) and the Seven Weeks’ War (1866) as the Daily Telegraph war correspondent. During this time, Dicey also contributed to The Reader (1863-5) and Saint Paul’s (1867) and edited the Daily News for 3 months in 1870 before he turned to political journalism. He edited The Observer from 1870-89, and was a key voice in the paper’s opposition to the 1886 Irish Home Rule Bill. In later life, Dicey occasionally filed special reports including his coverage of the Assouan function in Egypt (1902) and his support for annexation for The Times, for whom he also became an occasional obituarist from 1895, writing the stock obituary of fellow special W. H. Russell for The Times. Dicey also contributed to a range of periodicals including Empire Review, Fortnightly Review (in which he contributed on South Africa in 1896-7), Nineteenth Century, and Times Literary Supplement. He also wrote many memoirs and reflections based on his special correspondence, including Six Months in the Federal States (1863), The Morning Land: Sketches of Turkey, the Holy Land and Egypt (1870), and The Peasant State: An Account of Bulgaria in 1894 (1894). Dicey died in Gray’s Inn on 7 July 1911. AD   References:  Cosgrove, Richard A. The rule of law: Albert Venn Dicey, Victorian jurist. London: Macmillan, 1980. ‘Edward James Stephen Dicey’. Scoop Database. 1 December 2013. http://www.scoop-database.com Graves, Charles L. Life and letters of Alexander Macmillan. London: Macmillan and Co., 1910. Matthew, H. C. G. ‘Dicey, Edward James Stephen (1832–1911).’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2006. 1 January 2014 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32812. Plarr, V. G. Men and women of the time. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1899.	  

Dicey, Edward James Stephen (1832-1911)

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Kent Academic Repository