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Henry Vizetelly

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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HENRY VIZETELLY (1820-18,94), English publisher, was born in London on the 30th of July 1820, the son of a printer. He was early apprenticed as a wood engraver, and one of his first blocks was a portrait of "Old Parr." Encouraged by the success of the Illustrated London News, Vizetelly in 1843, with his brother James Thomas Vizetelly (1817-1897) and Andrew Spottiswoode (1787-1866), started the Pictorial Times, which was published successfully for several years. In 1855, in partnership with Boyne, he started a threepenny paper called the Illustrated Times, which four years later was merged in the Penny Illustrated Paper. In 1865 Vizetelly became Paris correspondent for the Illustrated London News. During the years he remained in Paris he published several books - Paris in Peril (1882), The Story of the Diamond Necklace (1867) and a free translation of Topin's Man in the Iron Mask. In 1872 he was transferred to Berlin, where he wrote Berlin under the New Empire (1879). In 1887 he established a publishing house in London, issuing numerous translations of French and Russian authors. In 1888 he was prosecuted for publishing a translation of Zola's La Terre, and was fined £Ioo; and when he reissued Zola's works in 1889 he was again prosecuted, fined 200 and imprisoned for three months. In 1893 he wrote a volume of autobiographical reminiscence called Glances Back through Seventy Years, a graphic picture of literary Bohemia in Paris and London between 1840 and 1870. He died on the 1st of January 1894. His younger brother, Frank Vizetelly (1830-1883), was a clever artist and journalist; he went to Egypt as war correspondent for the Illustrated London News and was never heard of after the massacre of Hicks Pasha's army in Kordofan.