Sir Cyril Arthur Pearson, 1st Baronet (24 February 1866 – 9 December 1921) was a British newspaper magnate and publisher, who founded the Daily Express.
Contents
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.