Theodore Hook

Theodore Hook in advanced years

Theodore Edward Hook (born September 22, 1788 in London , † August 24, 1841 ibid) was a British journalist and novelist.

Life

The son of the popular composer James Hook (1746–1827) showed musical and poetic skills at an early age and was presented by his father at court. The sixteen-year-old wrote the successful comic opera The Soldier's Return with him .

Hook's formal education consisted of a year at Harrow School and a pro forma stint at Oxford , but the teenage playboy knew how to improvise songs and this excited the Prince Regent so much that he made Hook the accounting commissioner of Mauritius . Hook lived on the island on a grand scale for five years, but in 1817 he was arrested and taken to England for a substantial deficit evaded by a subordinate.

Hook, around 1810

Even while the investigation was ongoing, Hook successfully devoted himself to journalism. In 1820 he began to publish the weekly magazine John Bull , the tendency to be a witty and aggressively written Tory sheet, which Queen Caroline chose as the target . Hook was already a notorious joker as a young man, so he was responsible for the Berners Street Hoax , which caused a sensation across England in 1810.

Because of his debt to the state, Hook was served two years in prison. Meanwhile he wrote nine volumes of short prose. In the aftermath, too, he remained restless, helping the singer Michael Kelly , who had still known Mozart, to write his memoirs and published the novels Maxwell (1830), Love and Pride (1833), the autobiographical Gilbert Gurney (1836) , Jack Brag (1837), Gurney Married (1838) and Peregrine Bunce (1842). The novel The parsons daughter, published in 1833, was translated into German as The Pastor's Daughter in 1847 .

literature

• Richard Harris Barham : Life and Remains of Hook. 3rd edition, 1877
• John Gibson Lockhart in: Quarterly Review . May 1843
• Bill Newton Dunn: The Man Who Was John Bull. Allendale Publishing, Richmond 1996

Web links

Commons : Theodore Hook  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Theodore Hook  - Sources and full texts