His father, Albert was a letter-carrier, and he had married Louise Jane Hall, originally from Kingston-on-Thames, on 7 February 1888.
Edgar was the second of three children for the couple, with an older sister Lilian (1889) and a younger brother Herbert (1892).
At that time Bournemouth had no secondary schools, and, "as education was difficult for poor boys", he spent six years studying at home, at the library, and in evening classes.
[2] He married Mabel Jacobsen (1887–1946) at St Alban's Church in Bournemouth on 22 August 1918 while on a 14 day pass from his unit.
Mabel was a Shakespearean actress, who has trained at the Leeds College of Dramatic Art,[3] and was especially interested in the Little Theatre movement, and in verse speaking.
[10] While at Hatfield House he discovered a rare 1597 copy of the second edition Francis Bacon's Essays which was sold at Sotheby's for £2,600 in 1958.
[2] The collection continued to grow backwards in time with even a 1566 copy of Aesop's Fables.
By the time of Mabel's death in 1946 the collection held 1,800 books and Osborne was looking for a permanent home for it.
Osborne offered it to libraries in England, but none would meet his conditions that it should be properly housed and described in a published catalogue.
[11] Fortunately, Osborne and Mabel had visited Toronto in 1934 and met Judith St. John Osborne had been a delegate for the Library Association of Great Britain at a meeting of American Library Association and travelled on to Canada after the meeting.
Osborne, who had finished full-time education at eleven, received the following awards: He died at his home in Morley, near Derby.