Cyril Arthur Pearson

Sir Cyril Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet, GBE (24 February 1866 – 9 December 1921) was a British newspaper magnate and publisher, best known for founding the Daily Express.

Pearson was born in the village of Wookey, Somerset to Arthur Cyril and Phillippa Massingberd Maxwell (née Lyte) Pearson (the granddaughter of the hymn-writer and poet Henry Francis Lyte) and educated at Winchester College in Hampshire. His father was Rector of Drayton Parslow in Buckinghamshire, England. 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 for him to make him 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, won be appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). The couple had a son, Neville, and three daughters.

In 1890, after six years of working for Newnes, Pearson left to form his own publishing business and within three weeks had created the periodical journal Pearson's Weekly, the first issue of which sold a quarter of a million copies. A philanthropist, in 1892 he established the charitable Fresh Air Fund, still in operation and now known as Pearson's Holiday Fund, to enable disadvantaged children to partake in outdoor activities. In 1898, he purchased the Morning Herald, and in 1900 merged it into his new creation, the halfpenny Daily Express.

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