Stoddart, Thomas Tod

(1810-1880)

   Scottish poet, born in Edinburgh, the son of Admiral Pringle Stoddart, he was educated at Edinburgh University and met such poets as Hartley Coleridge, James Hogg (the Ettrick Shepherd), and William Ayton (see entries). His papers on the Art of Angling, which appeared in Chambers's Journal, were published in 1835 in book form; it was the first treatise of its kind that appeared in Scotland. In 1847 he published his classic The Angler's Companion to the Rivers and Lakes of Scotland. He married in 1836 and settled in Kelso, where he found the surroundings so congenial for the practice of his art in the rivers Tweed and Teviot that it became his home for life, and where he died. Some of his poetry publications: The Death-Wake or Lunacy, 1831. Songs and Poems, 1839. Songs of the Seasons, 1873. An Angler's Rambles, 1866. Some of his poems: "A Loch Scene," "A Winter Landscape," "My Ain Wee Fisher Boy," "The Angler's Benediction," "The Angler's Complaint," "The Bonnie Tweed," "The Fairy Angler," "The Flee," "The Lamp," "To a Spirit."

   Sources: Angling Songs of Thomas Tod Stoddart. William Blackwood and Sons, 1889. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse. Jerome J. McGann. Oxford University Press, 1993.