James Edge-Partington was born in Manchester in 1854 and educated at Rugby, later studying law and beginning a career as a solicitor. As an anthropologist and authority on Pacific ethnology, his collected materials included items of the peoples of the Pacific and Australasian regions. He was a long serving member of the Royal Anthropology Institute and volunteered at the ethnological department of the British Museum. Edge-Partington died in 1930 and his collections were donated to the British, Australian and Auckland museums.