I have recently been reading Edward Dicey’s first-person narrative about the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864 - which he observed a at close hand from both sides of the conflict - and as a result, I decided to find out more about him.
Edward Dicey was born on 15th May 1832 in Claybrook, Leicestershire. His father - Thomas Edward Dicey - was a senior wrangler in 1811, a railway pioneer in the Midlands, and owner of a Northampton newspaper, and his mother - Anne Mary - was the sister of Sir James Stephen - an abolitionist and the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1836 to 1847.
He was educated at home before attending King’s College London for two years and then Trinity College Cambridge, where he obtained a 3rd-class BA and been President of the Cambridge Union for a year.
After university he began writing and travelling as well as developing an interest in international politics. From 1861 until 1870 he crossed and re-crossed the world, and visited and wrote about the early stages of the reunification of Italy, the American Civil War, the Schleswig-Holstein War, and the Austro-Prussian War. In 1862 he became a member of the staff of THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, and in 1870 he was editor of THE DAILY NEWS for three months. He then moved over to THE OBSERVER, where he was editor from 1870 until 1889.
In 1865 he entered Gray’s Inn and ten years later he was called to the Bar although he never practiced. That said, in later life he made his Chambers his home, and he became a Bencher in 1896 and Treasurer from 1903 to 1904. He died in Chambers on 7th July 1911.
His books reflected his travels and interests and included:
- Rome in 1860 (1861
- Cavour: A Memoir (1861)
- Six Months in the Federal States (1863)
- The Schleswig-Holstein War (1864)
- The Battle-Fields of 1866 (1866)
- A Month in Russia during the Marriage of the Czarevitch (1867)
- The Morning Land, being Sketches of Turkey, the Holy Land, and Egypt (1870)
- England and Egypt (1881
- Victor Emmanuel (1882)
- Bulgaria, the Peasant State (1894)
- The Story of the Khedivate (1902)
- The Egypt of the Future (1907)
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