DICEY, EDWARD (1832– ), English writer, son of T. E. Dicey of Claybrook Hall, Leicestershire, was born in 1832. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took mathematical and classical honours, he became an active journalist, contributing largely to the principal reviews. He was called to the bar in 1875, became a bencher of Gray’s Inn in 1896, and was treasurer in 1903–1904. He was connected with the Daily Telegraph as leader writer and then as special correspondent, and after a short spell in 1870 as editor of the Daily News he became editor of the Observer, a position which he held until 1889. Of his many books on foreign affairs perhaps the most important are his England and Egypt (1884), Bulgaria, the Peasant State (1895), The Story of the Khedivate (1902), and The Egypt of the Future (1907). He was created C.B. in 1886.
His brother Albert Venn Dicey (b. 1835), English jurist, was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first class in the classical schools in 1858. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1863. He held fellowships successively at Balliol, Trinity and All Souls’, and from 1882 to 1909 was Vinerian professor of law. He became Q.C. in 1890. His chief works are the Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885, 6th ed. 1902), which ranks as a standard work on the subject; England’s Case against Home Rule (1886); A Digest of the Law of England with Reference to the Conflict of Laws (1896), and Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the 19th century (1905).