Constituency : Dundee 1874-80
Edward came in second at Dundee displacing Sir John Ogilvy who came third. Edward was actually absent in America on a lecture tour during the campaign.
Edward was born in India, the son of a Methodist minister. He was educated in Canada and the USA and became a barrister. At the beginning of the 1870s he began making a name for himself as an author of satirical novels such as Ginx's Baby : his birth and other misfortunes ( 1870 ) about an impoverished child tussled over by rival philanthropists. His 1871 novel Lord Bantam , about an idealistic aristocrat who abandons his radicalism when he inherits , was denounced in The Times as a vehicle for "Red Republican opinions". Edward supported Joseph Arch's campaigns for agricultural labourers , reflected in his 1873 novel Little Hodge. In 1871 he travelled to Guyana for a report on the conditions of coolies in Guyana by the English Benevolent Society. He contested by-elections at Truro in 1870 and Dundee in 1873. In 1874 he was appointed agent-general of the Canadian Dominion dealing in emigration matters. He promoted the ideas of imperial federation. On his lecture tour in 1874 he castigated the Criminal Law Amendment Act as "a gross instance of special legislation aimed at and affecting in almost all of its particulars only one portion of the community".
In 1874 Edward spoke for the extension of voting hours. In 1879 he demanded the resignation of the British commander Lord Chelmsford after the defeat at Isandlwana.
Edward decided not to seek re-election in 1880 but then contested a by-election in Edinburgh the following year. His imperialism had led him to the Conservatives by 1885 and he stood for Dundee again in 1885 but came bottom of the poll.
He died in 1910 aged 72 after a stroke had left him paralysed some years before,
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