WILLIAM HEPWORTH

See also:

• DIXON
• DIXON, GEORGE (1755 ?–1800)
• DIXON, HENRY HALL (1822-1870)
• DIXON, RICHARD WATSON (1833-1900)
• WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON (1821-1879)

DIXON (1821-1879)  , English author and traveller, was born at Great Ancoats, Manchester, on the 3oth of June 1821, a member of an old Lancashire family . Beginning life as a clerk at Manchester, he decided, in 1846, to take up literature as a career . After gaining some journalistic experience at Cheltenham he settled in . London, , on the recommendation of Douglas Jerrold, and contributed to the Athenaeum and Daily News . His series of papers—" The Literature of the Lower Orders "—in the last-named journal, and a further series, " London Prisons," were widely noticed . In 1849 appeared his John Howard and the Prison World of Europe, which proved a great popular success . These were followed by a Life of William Penn (1851), in which he replied to Macaulay's attack on Penn; Life of Blake (1852); and Personal History of Lord Bacon (1861), supplemented by The Story of Lord Bacon's Life (1862) . From 1853 to 1869 he was editor of the Athenaeum . In 18)53 he 'visited the East, and on his return helped to found the Palestine Exploration Fund, and published (1865) The Holy Land . In 1866 he travelled through the United States, publishing, in 1867, New America, and, the following year, Spiritual Wives, two supplementary volumes . In the autumn of 1867 he journeyed through the Baltic Provinces, publishing an account of his trip in Free Russia (1870) . In 1871 he was in Switzerland, and in 1872 in Spain, where he wrote the greater part of his History of Two Queens .

In 1874 he revisited the United States, giving the impressions of his tour in The

White Conquest (1875) . His other works, besides some fiction, were British Cyprus (1879) and Royal Windsor . He died on the 26th of December 1879 . His daughter, Ella N . Hepworth Dixon, became known as a journalist and novelist .