Background
Edward Tyas Cook was born on May 12, 1857, in Brighton, England. He was the son of Silas Kemball, secretary of Seamen’s Hospital at Greenwich, and Emily (Archer) Cook.
New College, Oxford OX1 3BN, United Kingdom
Edward Tyas Cook attended New College, in Oxford, and in 1881, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
https://www.amazon.com/Highways-Byways-London-Mrs-Cook/dp/1164669133/?tag=2022091-20
1903
Edward Tyas Cook was born on May 12, 1857, in Brighton, England. He was the son of Silas Kemball, secretary of Seamen’s Hospital at Greenwich, and Emily (Archer) Cook.
Edward Tyas Cook attended New College, in Oxford, and in 1881, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. At Oxford’s New College, Cook became president of the Oxford Union debating society and also began to publish art criticism in Temple Bar Magazine. Moreover, he attended each of Ruskin’s lectures and kept careful notes of Ruskin’s comments and digressions.
In 1881 Cook began a freelance writing career while supporting himself as a secretary at the London Society for Extension of University Teaching. But by 1883, he was offered an editorial position at the famed Pall Mall Gazette. The position enabled Cook to turn his attention back to his old hero, John Ruskin. At the request of editor William Thomas Stead, Cook began to summarize Ruskin’s lectures for the Pall Mall Gazette, pointing out where in performance Ruskin had diverged from his published speeches.
By 1885, Cook was a rising star at the Pall Mall Gazette; moreover, his notes on Ruskin’s improvised orations caught Ruskin’s own eye. Ruskin wrote to the Pall Mall Gazette to request an interview with Cook. The two met several times and worked together on A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, which Cook edited and Ruskin prefaced. But gradually, the mental illness that eventually flattened Ruskin took hold. Cook could no longer meet with Ruskin, but he could offer his long memory of Ruskin’s spoken performances as a means of completing the dying Ruskin’s oeuvre.
Cook compiled his first effort in this direction - Studies in Ruskin: Some Aspects of the Work and Teaching of John Ruskin (1890) - to describe many of Ruskin’s positions on art, along with Cook’s record of Ruskin’s lectures. In the year that book was published, Cook also became editor of the Pall Mall Gazette; he held that position until 1892 when the magazine changed ownership. A new journal, the Westminster Gazette, was reared in the place of the old “P. M. G.” and Cook was reinstated as the head.
In 1896, Cook switched to become editor of the London Daily News, but eventually, he worked only on leader articles for the Daily Chronicle, while he “pegged away at Ruskin” as he called his magnum opus. The 39-volume labor was published between 1903 to 1912; already, interest in Ruskin had faded.
Cook followed this work with an edited collection of sketches made by another Ruskin disciple, Emily Warren, of Ruskin’s favorite places: Homes and Haunts of John Ruskin (1913). But though Cook’s commentary met with critical approval, Warren’s drawings did not, and Cook turned his attention away from Ruskin after spending over 50 years engaged with his master.
Though Cook’s work with Ruskin had earned him the tribute of knighthood in 1912, he turned to other subjects. In 1913, he published The Life of Florence Nightingale, in which he described Nightingale’s work with the same cautious admiration he had offered Ruskin. Cook followed this performance with another biography, Delane of the Times (1915) a life of John Delane, the editor of the London Times from 1841 to 1877.
Cook was by June 1915 named manager of the Press Bureau, in which post he censored newspapers during World War I. He continued in the position until 1919, earning a Knight of the British Empire award for his service.
During these later years, he also wrote two more works of literary memoirs: Literary Recreations (1918) and More Literary Recreation (1919). In those essays, Cook reflects on what it means to be an editor, to select and shape writing as he did all his life. The second volume was published just as Cook died after a period of deteriorating health. Reviewers recognized in these essays the value of Cook’s brand of cautious, responsible editorship that had created the Works of John Ruskin and the literary biographies of Ruskin, Nightingale, and Delane.
(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)
1903(vol. 1 of 2)
1913(vol. 2 of 2)
1913Quotes from others about the person
Cook might not be remembered at all today were it not for the revival of interest in Ruskin in recent years; it is as the careful guardian of Ruskin's reputation that Cook seems to have made his most lasting contribution to literature.” - Carolyn Lengel
Cook married Emily Constance Baird in 1884. She died in 1903.