Edward Tyas Cook

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Edward Tyas Cook (1899)

Edward Tyas Cook (born May 12, 1857 in Brighton , England , † September 30, 1919 in South Stoke , England) was a British journalist , biographer and intellectual .

Life

Cook was born in Brighton and was the youngest son of Silas Kemball Cook, Secretary of the Royal Naval Hospital in Greenwich , and his wife Emily, née. Archer. He was trained in Winchester at New College (St Mary's College of Winchester at Oxford ) , where he was President of the Debating Club and graduated with a double A. His friends assumed he would make a career in politics, but Cook's goal was to get into journalism. After moving to London, he worked as a secretary for the London Society for Extension of University Teachingand occasionally contributed to several magazines. During that time, he joined the Inner Temple Bar Association but never took his bar exams.

In August 1888, Cook was hired by his friend Alfred Milner for a part-time position at the liberal Pall Mall Gazette , then under the editorial staff of John Morley . Cook subsequently succeeded Milner as assistant editor of Morley's successor, WT Stead . After Stead's resignation in 1889, Cook was selected to succeed him. Cook soon proved to be a more than capable editor, with a writing style that was more analytical than Stead's passionate approach. As editor, Cook represented many of Stead's positions, such as liberal imperialism and a strong navy, but he brought in a younger group of writers as contributors.

Cook's tenure as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette was interrupted when he was forced to resign along with the rest of the political staff after the newspaper was sold to WW Astor , who changed policy to support conservative positions. To fill the void created by the departure of the Pall Mall Gazette from the liberal camp, Cook founded a new evening paper, the Westminster Gazette, in January 1893 . The newspaper was launched with the help of the liberal publisher George Newnes and employed the core of the old political staff of the Pall Mall Gazette. It quickly established itself in the forefront of liberal publications and earned the respect and admiration of Liberal Prime Minister Lord Rosebery . Cook insisted on maintaining his independence as a publisher, however, and was no shame in endorsing Union-minded politicians when he felt they deserved it.

In December 1895, Cook was asked by Arnold Morley to publish the Daily News. Considered "the only 'quality" Liberal morning paper, "it suffered from falling sales and had drawn the wrath of many in the Liberal Party for its opposition to Rosebery's policies. Cook only consented after Morley had assured him that, as with the Westminster Gazette, there would be no interference with Cook's editorial management. As editor, Cook continued to support what he saw fit, but despite his best efforts, he failed to reverse the decline in circulation.

The beginning of the Boer War in 1899 brought Cook directly into conflict with the Little England wing of the Liberal Party. When David Lloyd George organized a consortium of liberal businessmen to buy the Daily News in 1901, he stated that the newspaper would take a neutral stance on the war. Cook, a strong imperialist, could not stay under these circumstances and was replaced by RC Lehmann .

After Cook left the Daily News, he wrote editorials for the Daily Chronicle from 1900 to 1910 . His most important achievement in these years, however, was the publication of the writings of John Ruskin , on which he worked with Alexander Wedderburn. They appeared in thirty-nine volumes between 1903 and 1911 and are still the most important collection of Ruskin's writings. After completing this assignment, Cook continued to write other works, including biographies of Florence Nightingale and John Delane, and manuals for the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum .

At the beginning of World War I, Cook put his skills to the service of the war effort. He wrote a short pamphlet called How Britain Strove for Peace . In 1915 he became director of the official press office together with Sir Frank Swettenham . The press office was created for direct coverage of the war, but its function changed over the time of the conflict. Cook was respected by his contemporaries for performing the difficult work with wisdom and devotion. After he was knighted in 1912, he was made Knight Commander in 1917 on the occasion of the establishment of the Order of the British Empire . After the war, Cook authored two volumes of Literary Reflections and a press office report, which was published after his death.

Publications (selection)

  • Studies in Ruskin (1891)
  • Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War (1901)
  • Highways and Byways in London (1903)
  • Edmund Garrett: A Memoir (1909)
  • The Life of John Ruskin (2 vols.) (1911)
  • The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913), Available Online: Volume 1 , Volume 2 , last accessed May 28, 2020
  • Delane of The Times (1915)
  • Literary Reflections (1918-1919)
  • The Press in War-Time: with some Account of the Official Press Bureau (1920)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). Cook, Sir Edward Tyas. Encyclopædia Britannica. 30 (12th ed.). London & New York. p. 745.
  2. a b c Morris, AJA (2004). Cook, Sir Edward Tyas (1857-1919). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 32540.
  3. Koss, Stephen (1984). The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. 1: The Nineteenth Century. NC: Chapel Hill