Tom Hood

Thomas Hood (19 January 1835 – 20 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). His elder sister was the children's writer Frances Freeling Broderip. 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.

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. In 1861 he wrote Quips and Cranks, and Daughters of King Daher, and other Poems. 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), The Lost Link (1868), Captain Masters's Children (1865), and Love and Valour (1872). In 1866 he translated Ernest L'Épine's La Légende de Croquemitaine.

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, some of which were collected in his father's book Precocious Piggy.