The Works of Thomas Hood Comic and Serious, in Prose and in Verse, with all the Original Illustrations In Nine Volumes

An illustrated set of The Works of Thomas Hood by his son and daughter. This set contains nine of eleven volumes, and is missing volumes nine and eleven. Thomas Hood (23 May 1799 3 May 1845) was a British humourist and poet. His son, Tom Hood, became a well known playwright and editor. Hood contributed humorous and poetical articles to the provincial newspapers and magazines. As a proof of his literary vocation, he used to write out his poems in printed characters, believing that this process best enabled him to understand his own peculiarities and faults. On his return to London in 1818 he applied himself to engraving, enabling him later to illustrate his various humours and fancies by quaint devices. In 1821, John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, was killed in a duel, and the periodical passed into the hands of some friends of Hood, who proposed to make him sub-editor. His installation into this post at once introduced him to the literary society of the time; and in becoming the associate of John Hamilton Reynolds, Charles Lamb, Henry Cary, Thomas de Quincey, Allan Cunningham, Bryan Procter, Serjeant Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, the peasant-poet John Clare and other contributors to the magazine, he gradually developed his own powers. The series of the Comic Annual, dating from 1830, was a kind of publication at that time popular, which Hood undertook and continued, almost unassisted, for several years. Under that somewhat frivolous title he treated all the leading events of the day in caricature, without personal malice, and with an under-current of sympathy. He started a magazine in his own name, for which he secured the assistance of many literary men, but which was mainly sustained by his own activity. From a sick-bed, from which he never rose, he conducted this work, and there composed well known poems, such as the Song of the Shirt (which appeared anonymously in the Christmas number of Punch, 1843 and was immediately reprinted in The Times and other newspapers across Europe. It was dramatised by Mark Lemon as The Sempstress, was printed on broadsheets, cotton handkerchiefs and was highly praised by many of the literary establishment, including Charles Dickens.) In black quarter calf amateur bindings with purple cloth covered boards. Externally, sound with slight rubbing. Corners are slightly bumped on some volumes. Internally, generally firmly bound, though binding is loosening in places in some volumes. Pages are generally bright and clean with some mild age-toning. There are some marks to the first and last few pages in all volumes. Very Good.…