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Thomas Hood (19 January 183520 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).
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 Daughters of King Daher, a Story of the Mohammedan Invasion of Scinde; and other Poems, Saunders, Otley, and Co. 1861. 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), A Golden Heart: A Novel, Vol. II, Vol. III, Tinsley Brothers, 1867. The Lost Link (1868), The Lost Link: A Novel, Vol. II, Vol. III, Tinsley Brothers, 1868. Captain Masters's Children (1865), Captain Master's Children: A Novel, Vol. II, Vol. III, Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1865. and Love and Valour (1872). Love and Valor, James R. Osgood and Company, 1872. In 1866 he translated Ernest L'Épine's La Légende de Croquemitaine. The Days of Chivalry, or the Legend of Croquemitaine, Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 1866.
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."Clever and kindly Tom Hood, not long before he died, gave me a bound copy of that droll yet sympathetic nursery story, written by his distinguished father the poet and wit, entitled ' The Headlong Career and Woeful Ending of Precocious Piggy.' Tom Hood often told me how, as a little boy, he had enjoyed the comical history, when it was related to him by his father, who had written it especially for the amusement of his children, and who were all, more or less, deeply interested in Piggy's adventures. I have drawn many a laugh and many a tear from the little ones to whom I have read the story, and my copy, a gift from the son, who so cleverly illustrated his father's quaint fancy, is much prized by me." — Squire & Effie Bancroft, Mr. & Mrs. Bancroft on and off the Stage, Vol. II, Chap. 1, Richard Bentley & Son, 1888, p. 13.
Meanwhile, in 1860, the younger Hood obtained a position in the War Office, which he served for five years. In 1865 he left the War Office when selected as editor of Fun, a Victorian weekly magazine which became very popular under his direction. In 1867, he first issued Tom Hood's Comic Annual, not to be confused with the similarly-named Comic Annual that had been published in 1830 through 1842 by his father, the senior Thomas Hood (who, by then, had already died).
In private life, Hood's geniality and sincere friendliness secured him the affection and esteem of a wide circle of acquaintance."Tom Hood had an influence among the younger writers and artists of his day that cannot be over-rated. He was the most unselfish and least jealous of men. He loved to get his friends about him to talk shop, and to encourage one another in their various callings. Every Friday night of his life, though not particularly blest with this world's riches, he gave a cheery Bohemian supper-party, to which the best fellows in the world were invited. Who that was privileged to attend them can have forgotten Tom Hood's " Friday nights" in South Street, Brompton, where after a pipe and music, conversation, and poetry readings, we sat down to a homely meal of cold joint and roast potatoes, and discussed all the wonderful things that we youngsters intended to do in the future." — Clement Scott, Thirty Years at the Play, The Railway and General Automatic Library, 1891, pp. 20–21. Some of these friends became contributors to his publications. For example, he befriended the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the American journalist Ambrose Bierce,Robert L. Gale, An Ambrose Bierce Companion, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. both frequent contributors to Fun. Hood wrote the burlesque, Robinson Crusoe; or, The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife (1867), together with Gilbert, H. J. Byron, H. S. Leigh and Arthur Sketchley. Hood's Fun gang also included playwright Thomas W. Robertson, among others.T. H. S. Escott, "Beginning Work (1865–6)." In Platform, Press, Politics & Play, J. W. Arrowsmith, 1895.
Hood's first wife, Susan (on occasion called "Mrs Tom"), died in 1873, at the age of only thirty-seven. He married Justine Rudolphine Charotton (born 1844/5) on 15 August 1874, only a few months before his own death.
Hood died suddenly in his cottage at Peckham Rye, Surrey, on 20 November 1874 and was buried in Nunhead Cemetery.
Carroll replied a month later, in a terse letter to editor of The Nineteenth Century:
In 1889 Carroll even inserted an announcement in the back of The Nursery "Alice","According to Selwyn Goodacre and Jeffrey Stern, the same warning also appeared in the first editions of Sylvie and Bruno (1890) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), as well in the reprints of the People's Edition of Wonderland until 1893 and Through the Looking-Glass until 1894." — Jan Susina, "Imitations of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Anxiety of Influence." In The Place of Lewis Carroll in Children's Literature, Chap. V, Routledge, 2010. correcting his previous explanation and further denying Tom Hood's influence:
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