This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Brotherton, Edward". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
Edward Brotherton (1814–1866) was an English Swedenborgian and a campaigner for educational reform.
Brotherton was born at Manchester in 1814, and in early life was engaged in the silk trade, but, foreseeing that the commercial treaty with France was likely to bring to an end the prosperity of his business, he retired with a competence.
After a year of continental travel he devoted himself to the work of popular education. The letters of "E.B." in the Manchester newspapers excited great attention, and led to the formation of the Education Aid Society, which gave aid to all parents too poor to pay for the education of their children. The experiment upon the voluntary system tended to prove the necessity of compulsion. This demonstration, which H.A. Bruce, afterwards Lord Aberdare, called "the thunderclap from Manchester", paved the way for the Education Act of 1870. Brotherton's zeal in the cause was unbounded; he had patience, a winning grace of manner, and a candour only too rare in controversy. In the course of his visitations among the poor he caught a fever, of which he died, after a few days' illness, at Cornbrook, Manchester, 23 March 1866, and was buried at the Wesleyan cemetery in Cheetham Hill. There is a portrait of him in Manchester Town Hall.
Besides many contributions to periodicals he wrote:
He was the editor and chief writer of the first volume of a monthly periodical, The Dawn (Manchester, 1861-2). He wrote frequently as "Libra" and as "Pilgrim" in Swedenborgian periodicals. His chief contributions were the "Outlines of my Mental History", which appeared in the Intellectual Repository for 1849.