The son of a Scottish bookseller working in London, Thomas Hood was educated in private schools, worked in an accounting office (1812-15), lived with relatives in Scotland (1815-18), and was an apprentice engraver (1818-20). Hood was an editor at the London Magazine (1821-23) and edited The Gem (1829), Comic Annual (1830-42), the New Monthly Magazine (1841-43) and Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany (1844-45); with C. W. Dilke, J. H. Reynolds, and Allan Cunningham, Hood was part-proprietor of The Athenaeum. The great humorist died of consumption in 1845, deeply impoverished.
TEXT RECORDS:
1823Sonnet: — Death.
1824Ode on a distant Prospect of Clapham Academy.
1824The Two Swans. A Fairy Tale.
1826The Irish Schoolmaster.
1827Sonnet written in Shakspeare.
1827Sonnet. ["By ev'ry sweet tradition of true hearts."]
1827The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies.
PUBLICATIONS:
Odes and addresses to great people [with John Hamilton Reynolds]. 1825.
Whims and oddities. 1826, 1827.
The plea of the midsummer fairies, Hero and Leander, Lycus the Centaur, and other poems. 1827.
National tales. 2 vols, 1827.
The Epping hunt. 1829.
Comic annual. 1830.
The dream of Eugene Aram. 1831.
Tylney Hall: a novel. 3 vols, 1834.
Hood's own, or laughter from year to year. 1838, 1861.
Up the Rhine. 1839.
The loves of Sally Brown and Ben the carpenter. 1840?
Whimsicalities: a periodical gathering. 2 vols, 1844, 1870.
Poems. 2 vols, 1846.
Poems of wit and humour. 1847.
Poetical works. 4 vols, 1856.
Fairy land: by the late Thomas and Jane Hood, their son and daughter. 1861.
Works, ed. T. Hood, Jr. 10 vols, 1869-73.
Poems, ed. Walter Jerrold. 1906.
Letters from the Dilke collection, ed. L. Marchand. 1945.
Selected poems, ed. John Clubbe. 1970.
Letters, ed. Peter F. Morgan. 1973.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Islington Academy
painter
editor
poet
novelist
dramatist
clerk
New Monthly Magazine
London Magazine
The Literary Gazette
Literary Magnet
Pocket Magazine
The Athenaeum
Englishman's Magazine
Forget-Me-Not
Friendship's Offering
Literary Souvenir
The Amulet
The Bijou
The Gem
Hood's Comic Annual
Ackermann's Juvenile Forget-Me-Not
Bernard Barton
Rev. Henry Francis Cary
John Clare
Allan Cunningham
Thomas De Quincey
Sir Charles Abraham Elton
Barron Field
William Hazlitt
William Jerdan
Charles Lamb
Dr. David Macbeth Moir
John Hamilton Reynolds
Horace Smith
Alaric Alexander Watts
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL; CBEL (3rd ed); DLB.
"Sketch of the Progress and State of Literature" La Belle Assemblee S3 (Supplement 1827) 294-98; Allan Cunningham, "Literature of the last Fifty Years" The Athenaeum No. 316 (16 November 1833) 772; S. C. Hall, in The Book of Gems (1838); Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); R. H. Horne, in New Spirit of the Age (1844); obituary in Gentleman's Magazine NS 24 (July 1845) 84-86; George Gilfillan, "Thomas Hood" in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine 14 (1847); George Gilfillan, in Second Gallery of Literary Portraits (1850); David Macbeth Moir, Poetical Literature of the Past Half-Century (1851; 1856) 250-58; Frances Freeling Broderip and Tom Hood, Memorials of Thomas Hood 2 vols (1860); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); David Masson, "Thomas Hood" Macmillan's Magazine 2 (1860); Charles Cowden Clarke, "Comic Writers of England: Thomas Hood" Gentleman's Magazine 232 (June 1872) 659-85; The English Poets, ed. Thomas Humphry Ward (1880); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); Walter Jerrold, Thomas Hood: his Life and Times (1907); Reschke, Die Spenserstanze (1918) 68-72; Walter Jerrold, Thomas Hood and Charles Lamb: The Story of a Friendship (1930); T. O. Mabbott, "Letters of Leigh Hunt, Hood, and Allan Cunningham" Notes and Queries 23 (May 1931); J. Gilmour, "Thomas Hood" Book Collector 4 (1955); Peter F. Morgan, "John Hamilton Reynolds and Thomas Hood" Keats-Shelley Journal 11 (1962); Laurence Brander, Thomas Hood (1963); J. C. Reid, Thomas Hood (1963); Jack, OHEL (1963); John Clubbe, Victorian Forerunner: the Later Career (1968); Lloyd N. Jeffrey, Thomas Hood (1972); Tim Chilcott, in A Publisher and his Circle: John Taylor (1972); Prance, Companion to Charles Lamb (1983); Romantic Parodies, ed. David A. Kent and D. R. Ewen (1992); Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for Thomas Hood:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for Thomas Hood:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)
1. | 1823 John Keats: Thomas Hood, "Sonnet written in Keats's Endymion" London Magazine 7 (May 1823) 541. |
2. | 1825 George Colman the Younger: Thomas Hood, "Ode to George Colman the younger, Deputy Licenser of Plays" London Magazine NS 1 (January 1825) 104-06. |
3. | 1825 Sir Walter Scott: Thomas Hood, "Ode to the Great Unknown" Odes and Addresses to Great People (1825) 39-53. |
4. | 1839 Rev. Henry Francis Cary: Thomas Hood, in "Reminiscences of Thomas Hood" Hood's Own (1839) 557-58. |
5. | 1839 John Clare: Thomas Hood, in "Reminiscences of Thomas Hood" Hood's Own (1839) 555-57. |
6. | 1839 Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Thomas Hood, in "Reminiscences of Thomas Hood" Hood's Own (1839) 560. |
7. | 1839 Allan Cunningham: Thomas Hood, in "Reminiscences of Thomas Hood" Hood's Own (1839) 557. |
8. | 1839 Charles Lamb: Thomas Hood, in "Reminiscences of Thomas Hood" Hood's Own (1839) 551. |
9. | 1839 Bryan Waller Procter: Thomas Hood, in "Reminiscences of Thomas Hood" Hood's Own (1839) 558. |