Hood, Thomas The Elder and Younger

(1799-1874)

   • Thomas, the father, 1799-1845

   Born in London, the son of a bookseller, he spent the years 1815-1818 with his father's relatives in Dundee, Scotland, recuperating from what could have been rheumatic fever. Being apprenticed to an engraver proved too much for his constitution so he turned to writing, and he became famous for his humorous writing and punning. He was the assistant editor of the London Magazine and later edited other literary periodicals: The Gem, Comic Annual, The New Monthly Magazine, and Hood's Magazine. He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, West London, where in 1854 a public monument was erected to him. Many of his poems, such as "The Song of the Shirt," "The Lay of the Labourer," and "The Bridge of Sighs" are moving protests against sweated labour, unemployment, and double sexual standards. Some of his publications: Odes and Addresses to Great People, 1825. The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, 1827. Hood's Own, 1838. Up the Rhine, 1839. Some of his other poems: "A Lay of Real Life," "An Address to the Steam Washing Company," "Domestic Poems," "The Wee Man," "The Workhouse Clock," "Written in the Workhouse."

   • Thomas, the son, 1835-1874

   Known as Tom Hood, he was born at Wanstead, Essex, and studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, with a view to reading for the church, but left without graduating. While living in Cornwall, he started working for Liskeard Gazette in 1856 and was editor during 1858-1859. He worked in the accountant-general's department of the war office from 1860 to 1865 and developed his skill as a caricaturist, then became editor of Fun, the comic newspaper founded in 1861. He wrote for the paper and drew and engraved many of its illustrations. With his sister, Frances Freeling Broderip, he illustrated and wrote many children's books. His first poem, "Farewell to the Swallows," was published in Sharpe's Magazine, 1853. He died at Peckham Rye, Surrey. Some of his publications: Pen and Pencil Pictures, 1857. Captain Masters's Children, 1865 (three volumes). Tom Hood's Comic Annual, 1867. Rules of Rhyme, a Guide to English Versification, 1869. Some of his poems: "His First Book," "A Catch," "All in the Downs," "Confounded Nonsense," "Poets and Linnets," "The Ballad of the Basking Shark," "The Cannibal Flea," "The Little Tigers are at Rest."

   Sources: A Century of Humorous Verse, 1850-1950. Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. E.P. Dutton (Everyman's Library), 1959. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Fellow Mortals: An Anthology of Animal Verse. Roy Fuller, ed. Macdonald and Evans, 1981. Speak Roughly to Your Little Boy. Myra Cohn Livingston, ed. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971. The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry. Hugh Haughton, ed. Chatto and Windus, 1988. 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 Faber Book of Comic Verse. Michael Roberts and Janet Adam Smith, eds. Faber and Faber, 1978. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood V. 2. Little, Brown and Co., 1857.