Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Dalziel, Edward
DALZIEL, EDWARD (1817–1905), draughtsman and wood-engraver, second of the Brothers Dalziel [see Dalziel, George, and Dalziel, Thomas Bolton Gilchrist Septimus, Suppl. II], was fifth son of Alexander Dalziel by his wife Elizabeth Hills. Born at Wooler, Northumberland, on 5 Dec. 1817, he was educated at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Brought up at first for business, he followed his brother George to London in 1839 and entered into a partnership with him as engraver, and afterwards as publisher and printer, which lasted till 1893. He is said to have taken the leading part in extending the operations of the firm, and is credited with the faculty of discerning and fostering a talent for illustration in artists hitherto untried. He himself studied, after coming to London, at the Clipstone Street life school, where he was a contemporary of Sir John Tenniel and of Charles Keene; he painted in his leisure time both in oils and water-colours, and exhibited occasionally at the Royal Academy. As an illustrator he was less gifted and prolific than his brother Thomas. No book was illustrated entirely by him, but woodcuts from his designs appear in the following: 'Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant' (New York, 1857); 'Home Affections with the Poets' (1858); Dalziel's 'Arabian Nights' (1864); 'A Round of Days' (1865); 'Poems' by Jean Ingelow (1867); Robert Buchanan's 'Ballad Stories of the Affections 1 (1866) and 'North Coast' (1868); Novello's 'Our National Nursery Rhymes' (1871); Dalziel's 'Bible Gallery' (1880). Thirty illustrations to Parnell's 'Hermit' from drawings made by Edward Dalziel in 1855 were privately printed at the Camden Press in 1904. Dalziel died on 25 March 1905 at 107 Fellows Road, South Hampstead, where he had resided since 1900, and was buried in old Highgate cemetery. Portraits of Edward Dalziel, from a painting by his brother Robert about 1841, and from a photograph of 1901, appear in 'The Brothers Dalziel,' the book of memoirs of which he was joint author with his brother George.
By his marriage in 1847 with Jane Gurden, who died in 1873, Edward Dalziel had five sons and four daughters. The eldest, Edward Gurden, born in London on 7 Feb. 1849, died on 27 April 1888; a painter and draughtsman of some merit (see Graves, Dict. of Artists), he illustrated ' Christmas Stories,' 'The Uncommercial Traveller,' and the tales published with 'Edwin Drood,' in Chapman & Hall's 'Household' edition of Charles Dickens (1871-9). The second son, Gilbert, artist and journalist, born on 25 June 1853, a pupil of the Brothers Dalziel as wood-engraver, and a student at the Slade School of Art under Sir Edward Poynter, P.R.A., became proprietor and editor of 'Judy' and other comic papers and annuals. The third and fourth sons, Harvey Robert, born on 13 March 1855, and Charles Davison, born on 16 Jan. 1857, carried on the Camden Press, the printing business of the Brothers Dalziel, under the name of Dalziel & Co., Limited, from 1893 till 1905, when the press was closed.
[The Brothers Dalziel, 1901; Gleeson White's English Illustration: The Sixties, 1897; The Times, 27 March 1905; information from Mr. Gilbert Dalzicl.]