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John Hoole (December 1727 – 2 August 1803) was an English translator, the son of Samuel Hoole (born 1692), a mechanic, and Sarah Drury (c. 1700 – c. 1793), the daughter of a Clerkenwell clockmaker. He became a personal friend of Samuel Johnson's.
Meanwhile he translated Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1763), and Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1773–83), as well as other works from the Italian. He was also the author of Cleonice, Princess of Bithynia and of two other dramas which failed.
Samuel Johnson was a personal friend of Hoole, who described Johnson's final days in the European Magazine of 1799.. Accessed 19 May 2010. Robert Southey recalled that Hoole's Jerusalem Delivered was "the first book he ever possessed," apart from a set of sixpenny children's books. The Early Diary of Frances Burney 1768–1778, ed. Annie Raine Ellis (London: G. Bell and Sons Ltd., 1913 1889), p. 308n. Hoole was a genial character, but termed as a translator not unfairly by Sir Walter Scott as "a noble transmuter of gold into lead". The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, from the original manuscript at Abbotsford. Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1891, p. 204. googlebooks.com. Accessed August 26, 2007.
David Barclay of Youngsbury turned to Hoole to write the biography of his friend John Scott of Amwell, when Johnson, his first choice, died before he could do so.David Perman, Scott of Amwell: Dr. Johnson's Quaker Critic, pp. 15–17.
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