William Hepworth Dixon

William Hepworth Dixon (30 June 1821 – 26 December 1879) was an English historian and traveller from Manchester. He was active in organizing London's Great Exhibition of 1851.

Early life

Dixon was born on 30 June 1821, at Great Ancoats in Manchester to Abner Dixon of Holmfirth and Kirkburton in the West Riding of Yorkshire and Mary Cryer. His uncle, Elijah Dixon, was the reform campaigner and manufacturer. He spent his boyhood in the hill country of Over Darwen, being schooled by a great-uncle, Michael Beswick. As a lad he became clerk to a Manchester merchant named Thompson.

Man of letters

Early in 1846 Dixon decided on a literary career. He was for two months editor of the Cheltenham Journal. While there he won two main essay prizes in Madden's Prize Essay Magazine. In the summer of 1846, he was advised by Douglas Jerrold to move to London. He entered the Inner Temple, but was not called to the bar until 1 May 1854 and never practised.

About 1850 Dixon became a deputy commissioner of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and started over 100 of 300 committees formed. After a tour in Europe, Dixon became in January 1853 editor of The Athenaeum, to which he had been contributing, and remained so until 1869.

Traveller

Dixon travelled in 1861 to Portugal, Spain and Morocco, and then in 1863 eastwards, returning to help in founding the Palestine Exploration Fund, of which he became an executive committee member and eventually chairman. In 1866 he travelled through the United States as far west as Salt Lake City. On the tour he lit upon a collection of state papers, originally Irish, in the public library at Philadelphia, which had been missing since the time of James II; on Dixon's suggestion it was passed to the British government.