Tom Hood Explained

Tom Hood
Birth Date:19 January 1835
Birth Place:Leytonstone, England
Death Place:Surrey, England
Nationality:English
Genre:Satire
Alma Mater:Pembroke College, Oxford

Thomas Hood (19 January 183520 November 1874) was an English humorist, playwright and author. He was the son of the poet and author Thomas Hood. Pen and Pencil Pictures (1857) was the first of his illustrated books. His most successful novel was Captain Master's Children (1865).

Biography

Hood was born at Lake House, Leytonstone, England, the son of the poet Thomas Hood and his wife Jane (née Reynolds) (1791–1846).[1] His older sister was the children's writer, Frances Freeling Broderip.[2] After attending University College School and Louth Grammar School, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1853. There he studied for the Church and passed all the examinations for the degree of BA, but did not graduate.May 2022.

At Oxford, he wrote his Farewell to the Swallows (1853) and Pen and Pencil Pictures (1854). He began to write for the Liskeard Gazette in 1856, and edited that paper in 1858 and 1859.May 2022. In 1861 he wrote Quips and Cranks, and Daughters of King Daher, and other Poems.[3] The next year, he published Loves of Tom Tucker and Little Bo-Peep, a Rhyming Rigmarole, followed in 1864 by Vere Vereker's Vengeance, a Sensation, and in 1865 by Jingles and Jokes for the Little Folks. His novels included A Disputed Inheritance (1863), A Golden Heart (1867),[4] The Lost Link (1868),[5] Captain Masters's Children (1865),[6] and Love and Valour (1872).[7] In 1866 he translated Ernest L'Épine's La Légende de Croquemitaine.[8]

He also wrote two books on English verse composition, several children's books (in conjunction with his sister, Frances Freeling Broderip), and a body of magazine and journal articles. Hood drew with considerable facility, and illustrated several of his father's comic verses,May 2022. some of which were collected in his father's book, Precocious Piggy.[9] [10]

Meanwhile, in 1860, the younger Hood obtained a position in the War Office, which he served for five years. In 1865 he left the War Office when selected as editor of Fun Magazine, a Victorian weekly magazine which became very popular under his direction. In 1867, he first issued Tom Hood's Comic Annual,May 2022. not to be confused with the similarly-named Comic Annual that had been published in 1830 through 1842 by his father, the senior Thomas Hood (who, by then, had already died).

In private life, Hood's geniality and sincere friendliness secured him the affection and esteem of a wide circle of acquaintance.[11] Some of these friends became contributors to his publications. For example, he befriended the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the American journalist Ambrose Bierce,[12] both frequent contributors to Fun. Hood wrote the burlesque, Robinson Crusoe; or, The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife (1867), together with Gilbert, H. J. Byron, H. S. Leigh and Arthur Sketchley. Hood's Fun gang also included playwright Thomas W. Robertson, among others.[13]

Hood's first wife, Susan, (on occasion called "Mrs Tom"), died in 1873, at the age of only thirty-seven. He married Justine Rudolphine Charotton (b. 1844/5) on 15 August 1874, only a few months before his own death.[14]

Hood died suddenly in his cottage at Peckham Rye, Surrey on 20 November 1874 and was buried in Nunhead cemetery.

Controversy over Alice in Wonderland

In 1887 the literary critic Edward Salmon suggested[15] that Lewis Carroll had plagiarised[16] [17] Hood's From Nowhere to the North Pole (1875)[18] when writing Alice:

Carroll replied a month later, in a terse letter to editor of The Nineteenth Century:

In 1889 Carroll even inserted an announcement in the back of The Nursery "Alice",[19] correcting his previous explanation and further denying Tom Hood's influence:

Legacy and honours

Notes

References

Notes and References

  1. Hood, Thomas (1799–1845), poet and humorist. 2021-01-02. 2004. en. 10.1093/ref:odnb/13681. Flint. Joy.
  2. Broderip [née Hood], Frances Freeling (1830–1878), children's writer]. 2021-01-02. 2004. en. 10.1093/ref:odnb/3477.
  3. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b166250;view=1up;seq=7 The Daughters of King Daher, a Story of the Mohammedan Invasion of Scinde; and other Poems
  4. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3123811;view=1up;seq=5 A Golden Heart: A Novel
  5. https://archive.org/stream/lostlinkanovel01hoodgoog#page/n4/mode/2up The Lost Link: A Novel
  6. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101018115079;view=1up;seq=5 Captain Master's Children: A Novel
  7. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433074870118;view=1up;seq=7 Love and Valor
  8. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nc01.ark:/13960/t5bc52q44;view=1up;seq=9 The Days of Chivalry, or the Legend of Croquemitaine
  9. Book: Anonymous. Illustrated by Waddy, Frederick. Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day. Tom Hood . 2010-12-30. 1873. Tinsley Brothers. London. 64.
  10. "Clever and kindly Tom Hood, not long before he died, gave me a bound copy of that droll yet sympathetic nursery story, written by his distinguished father the poet and wit, entitled ' The Headlong Career and Woeful Ending of Precocious Piggy.' Tom Hood often told me how, as a little boy, he had enjoyed the comical history, when it was related to him by his father, who had written it especially for the amusement of his children, and who were all, more or less, deeply interested in Piggy's adventures. I have drawn many a laugh and many a tear from the little ones to whom I have read the story, and my copy, a gift from the son, who so cleverly illustrated his father's quaint fancy, is much prized by me." — Squire & Effie Bancroft, Mr. & Mrs. Bancroft on and off the Stage, Vol. II, Chap. 1, Richard Bentley & Son, 1888, p. 13.
  11. "Tom Hood had an influence among the younger writers and artists of his day that cannot be over-rated. He was the most unselfish and least jealous of men. He loved to get his friends about him to talk shop, and to encourage one another in their various callings. Every Friday night of his life, though not particularly blest with this world's riches, he gave a cheery Bohemian supper-party, to which the best fellows in the world were invited. Who that was privileged to attend them can have forgotten Tom Hood's " Friday nights" in South Street, Brompton, where after a pipe and music, conversation, and poetry readings, we sat down to a homely meal of cold joint androast potatoes, and discussed all the wonderful things that we youngsters intended to do in the future." — Clement Scott, Thirty Years at the Play, The Railway and General Automatic Library, 1891, pp. 20–21.
  12. Robert L. Gale, An Ambrose Bierce Companion, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.
  13. T. H. S. Escott, "Beginning Work (1865–6)." In Platform, Press, Politics & Play, J. W. Arrowsmith, 1895.
  14. Hood, Thomas [Tom] [known as Thomas Hood the younger] (1835–1874), humorist and journal editor]. 2021-01-02. 2004. en. 10.1093/ref:odnb/13682. Howes. Craig.
  15. Carolyn Sigler, "Authorizing Alice: Professional Authority, the Literary Marketplace, and Victorian Women's Re-Visions of the Alice Books", The Lion and the Unicorn, Vol. 22, No. 3, September 1998.
  16. Florence Becker Lennon, Lewis Carroll, Cassell & Co., 1947, p. 329.
  17. Carolyn Sigler, Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books : An Anthology, University Press of Kentucky, 1997, p. 206.
  18. https://archive.org/stream/fromnowheretono00hoodgoog#page/n10/mode/2up From Nowhere to the North Pole
  19. "According to Selwyn Goodacre and Jeffrey Stern, the same warning also appeared in the first editions of Sylvie and Bruno (1890) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), as well in the reprints of the People's Edition of Wonderland until 1893 and Through the Looking-Glass until 1894." — Jan Susina, "Imitations of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Anxiety of Influence." In The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, Chap. V, Routledge, 2010.
  20. https://archive.org/stream/societyandcastee00robeuoft#page/n7/mode/2up Society and Caste
  21. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924096224955#page/n9/mode/2up Poems: Humorous and Pathetic
  22. "In 1875 Hood died. One day, several weeks later, Bierce was walking opposite Warwick Castle when he suddenly felt the presence of his friend in the street. The experience was never forgotten and he made fantastic use of it years later in "The Damned Thing," one of his most famous stories." — Carey McWilliams, "Ambrose Bierce," The American Mercury, February 1929.
  23. Gale (2001), pp. 131–132.
  24. Victoria County History of Essex, 1973

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Tom Hood".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.