Phipps, Edmund I Phipps (Ed.) I, 1808–1857, barrister-at-law, writer; younger brother of Lord Normanby. B.A. Oxford, 1828; M.A. 1831. Admitted at Inner Temple; called to the bar, 1832. Went the Northern Circuit. Recorder of Scarborough, later of Doncaster. Contributed to New Monthly. Wrote two pamphlets on monetary crisis, 1847, 1848; and one on trusts, 1854. Translated Henrik Hertz's King Rene's Daughter. Wrote Memoirs of the Political and Literary Life of Robert Plumer Ward, 1850.

      Dickens was a good friend of Lord Normanby; he was acquainted with Phipps. Phipps sent his H.W. contribution to Dickens from Florence. It recounts his visits to an Italian man and wife, Protestants, imprisoned for alleged violations of Tuscany's laws regarding religious practices. Concerning the article Dickens wrote to Wills, Nov. 1852: "There is not much in it, but the subject ... attracts so much attention just now, that I think it worth a push to get it into this Number" (no. 139).            
                                                                                                                                                                                            D.N.B. (entry: Henry Phipps)

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography