Sir Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet
British journalist, publisher (1866–1921)
Sir Cyril Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet (24 February 1866 – 9 December 1921) was a British newspaper magnate and publisher, who founded the Daily Express.
Family and early life
Pearson was born on 24 February 1866 in the village of Wookey, Somerset, a son of Arthur Cyril Pearson and Phillippa Massingberd Maxwell Lyte, who was a granddaughter of the hymn-writer and poet Henry Francis Lyte. He was educated at Winchester College in Hampshire. His father became rector of Drayton Parslow in Buckinghamshire. His first job was as a journalist working for the London-based publisher George Newnes on Tit-Bits magazine. Within his first year he had impressed Newnes enough to be made his principal assistant.
In December 1887, Pearson married Isobel Sarah Bennett, the daughter of Canon Frederick Bennett, of Maddington, Wiltshire, with whom he had three daughters. In 1897, Pearson married, as his second wife, Ethel, daughter of William John Fraser. Ethel, Lady Pearson, would be appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). The couple had a son, Neville (birth registered in Farnham, Q1 1898), and three daughters.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sir Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet” is british journalist, publisher (1866–1921). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Arthur, Pearson and Baronet, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6038822. VIAF identifies the subject as 160434933. The Library of Congress control number is nb2010030585. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1866, 1921, 1887 and 1897.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sir Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.