Background
Edward Allen Brotherton was born on April 1, 1856, in Manchester, United Kingdom. He was a son of Theophilus Brotherton.
A bust of Edward Allen Brotherton, 1st Baron Brotherton, on display in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
Industrialist politician writer
Edward Allen Brotherton was born on April 1, 1856, in Manchester, United Kingdom. He was a son of Theophilus Brotherton.
Edward Brotherton took classes at Owens College, which later evolved into the University of Manchester.
As a young adult, Edward Allen Brotherton held a series of odd jobs. He became exceedingly intrigued by the relatively new field of industrial chemistry, and around 1875 began working with an established chemical firm in Wakefield. Soon Brotherton had begun the process of buying out his partner, and in 1878 founded his own chemical works, Brotherton & Company. This chemical manufacturing still exists and is known as Esseco UK Limited.
A patriotic citizen, as he entered middle age Brotherton turned his energies toward public service. He was elected to the House of Commons as a representative from Wakefield first in 1902, and was re-elected for another term again on the Conservative Party ticket. He lost the 1910 election, but after World War I became the mayor of Wakefield. In the larger industrial city of Leeds he served two terms as lord mayor as well.
Brotherton’s book-collecting career began at an auction at Sotheby’s in February of 1922. An important literary artifact from Wakefield’s medieval era, a manuscript of a cycle of plays known as the Towneley Mysteries, was being sold that day. During the period of less than a decade in the 1920s, the Brotherton Collection quickly grew to include numerous first and early editions of classic works in English literature, such as Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1518), John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), four folios from William Shakespeare, and some of the first Bibles ever printed in English.
In 1927, Brotherton donated a large sum of money for the construction of a new library at the University of Leeds. This would become, as he stipulated, the permanent home of his collection. Just a few months prior to his death in 1930, Brotherton laid the foundation stone at the library’s building site. It opened to the public in 1936.
Edward Allen Brotherton married Jane Brookes in 1882, but his wife died in childbirth in 1883 and the child shortly afterwards. Edward did not remarry.