Hone, WILLIAM

Hone, WILLIAM, a versatile and industrious English writer, was born at Bath, June 3, 1780. He had but little education, and, after some years of hopeless drudgery in London as a lawyer's clerk, at twenty started a book and print shop there. But his busy mind was too full of all kinds of extraneous projects for success in business; and after no long time savings-bank schemes and lunatic asylum inquiries brought him to bankruptcy. He struggled bravely to get bread for his already numerous family by writing to various papers, started the Traveller, and next the Reformist's Register (February 1—October 25, 1817), which quickly carried his name across England by its brilliant political squibs and parodies, and by the caricatures of Cruikshank. On the 18th, 19th, and 20th December 1817 he was subjected to three separate trials before special juries for publishing things calculated to injure public morals and bring the Prayer-book into contempt. The prosecution was of course really political rather than religious, and the strongest pressure was brought to bear upon the court, yet Hone was acquitted on all three counts, after defending himself, weak in health as he was, with remarkable vigour and ability for over six hours each day. Among the more successful of his later satires, all illustrated by Cruikshank, were The Political House that Jack built, The Queen's Matrimonial Ladder (for Queen Caroline), The Man in the Moon, and The Political Showman. Works that revealed much reading in obscure channels were the Apocryphal New Testament (1820) and Ancient Mysteries Explained (1823). The Every-day Book (1826), Table-book (1827–28), and Year-book (1829) contained rich stores of information on manners and antiquities, into which most later miscellaneous writers upon folklore and popular traditions have burrowed. Yet their stout-hearted compiler at the end found himself in a debtor's jail, from which his friends extricated him to start him in a coffee-house—also a failure. In 1830 Hone edited Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, and contributed later to the Penny Magazine and the Patriot. In his last years he swung back to the devout theology of his mother's hearth, and often preached on Sundays. He died at Tottenham, 6th November 1842.