He is best known for The Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera: Comprising Their Generic Characters, a Notice of Their Habits and Transformations, and a Catalogue of the Species of Each Genus, co-written with John O. Westwood, and illustrated by William Chapman Hewitson; and List of the Specimens of Lepidopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum.

[1] In 1835, he joined a fellow Quaker named Robert Foster on a trip to the United States, and while there wrote a series of letters that appeared in the Entomological Magazine in London under the running title of "Communications on the Natural History of North America".

He spent much time in upstate New York where he and Foster collected numerous insects, including half a dozen stoneflies new to science that Edward Newman, yet another Quaker, described and named in a paper in the Entomological Magazine.

[3] He spent about two years in the United States and amassed a significant collection of insects, much of which he shipped to the British Museum and other scientific institutions in England.

As Robert Mays, author of the book Henry Doubleday: The Epping Naturalist wrote: "Had Edward lived longer his name would undoubtedly have found a place beside those of the eminent 19th century entomologists".