More Adey

When Douglas and Ross faced each other in court in 1913 in the Arthur Ransome libel case, Adey testified in Ross's favour, which caused Douglas to sever his ties with his former friend. Adey became assistant editor of the Burlington Magazine in November 1910, and served as co-editor, in partnership with Roger Fry and Lionel Cust, from January 1914 until May 1919. Adey can thus be seen as a point of connection between the aesthetes of the London 1890s and the Bloomsbury circle that came to prominence a generation later. He is credited with over thirty bylined articles in the magazine, as well as numerous unsigned notes and reviews, and is credited with bringing a strong iconographic appreciation to the magazine. Ross made his former partner the principal beneficiary of his will, but at an unknown point in the 1920s Adey was overcome by mental challenges and had to be confined in a place of long-term care. Adey died under care in 1942; in a brief tribute to the Burlington Magazines early co-editor, Barbara Pezzini described him in May 2010 as follows: "More Adey has often been described as a shy and diffident man, and his tragic death in a mental health institution in 1942, after having lost contact with even his closest friends, seemed to taint retrospectively his whole life."

More Adey was born on 22 July 1858 in Wotton-under-Edge, the youngest of five children and only son born to Emma Elizabeth Adey and Anthony Adey, the latter of which died in 1869. In 1870, Adey began studying at Clifton College.