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Sir Edwin Pears

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"SIR EDWIN PEARS (1835-1919), British lawyer and man of letters, was born at York March 18 1835, and educated privately and at the London University where he took first-class honours in Roman law and jurisprudence. He was called to the bar at Middle Temple in 1870 and for a time was private secretary to Frederick Temple, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and secretary to various associations connected with social work in London. In 1873 he settled in Constantinople, practising in the consular courts and becoming president of the European bar there. He acquired in this way an intimate knowledge of the East which he turned to account in 1876 when, as correspondent of The Daily News, he sent letters home describing Moslem atrocities in Bulgaria which aroused popular demonstrations in England led by W. E. Gladstone ( see 12.71). He was knighted in 1909. His works include The Fall of Constantinople, a Story of the Fourth Crusade (1885); The Destruction of the Greek Empire (1903) and, his most distinguished book, Turkey and its People (1911) in which he displayed his expert knowledge of Byzantine Constantinople. He died Nov. 27 1919 at Malta as the result of an accident on his journey home from Constantinople.