John Passmore Edwards M.P. (24 March 1823 – 22 April 1911) was a British journalist, newspaper owner and philanthropist, and briefly a Member of Parliament. Early life According to his autobiography Passmore Edwards was born in Blackwater, a small village between Redruth and Truro in Cornwall, England. He had three brothers, William, Richard and James. His father was a Cornishman, a carpenter by trade. His mother's maiden name was Passmore, and she had been born in Newton Abbot, Devon. He reported that in his youth there were few books available to him, and they were mostly theological in nature. At age twelve, the first book he managed to purchase for himself was Newton's Opticks, and he declared that he "was just as wise at the end as I was at the beginning of reading it". Journalist He became the Manchester representative of the London Sentinel, a weekly newspaper opposed to the Corn Law, in 1844 but the title failed within a year and by 1845 he settled in London, supporting himself by freelance writing and lecturing in the cause of social reform. His initial publishing ventures, including the widely read Public Good, were failures, bringing him to bankruptcy in 1853, but his 1862 purchase of The Building News and Engineering Journal (founded in 1854 as The Building News) led to profitability; this was followed by the twopenny weekly English Mechanic (subtitled and Mirror of Science and Art) and shareholding in the leading London newspaper The Echo which, in 1876, he later purchased. He eventually sold two-thirds of his share in The Echo to Andrew Carnegie to follow a political and social agenda. However, they disagreed and he bought it back and restored his editor in 1886. The paper closed in 1905. Ebeneezer J. Kibblewhite was longtime editor of The Building News and Architectural Journal, which in 1926 merged with The Architect to become The Architect and Building News. He was also editor of The Weekly Times and Echo (owned by Edwards) and English Mechanic. In 1893 Edwards and Kibblewhite were, as proprietor and editor/printer of The Weekly Times and Echo sued for libel by Colonel Hughes–Hallett, Edwards's one-time rival for parliamentary honours, thus imputing malice. The offending article, published in the issue of 29 May 1892, included the words It is reported that Colonel Hughes-Hallett, formerly M.P. for Rochester, is going to honor the new Parliament with his presence if