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Author: Hill, Thomas F.

Biography:

HILL, Thomas Ford (1753-95: ODNB)

He was born in Worcester on 21 Sept. 1753, the son of a Quaker couple, George and Elizabeth (Ford) Hill, who had married there on 20 Feb. 1736. His father was a glover and manufacturer and must have been prosperous. Following an apprenticeship, Thomas was taken into the linen-draper’s business of his brother-in-law on Cornhill in London, but before long he retired from business to pursue antiquarian and literary interests, and to travel. He contributed articles occasionally to GM. His small volume of Antient Erse Poems was the product of a tour in Scotland in 1780. After 1784 he travelled extensively on the Continent—France, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany--to acquire languages and study antiquities, and he became known for his extensive knowledge. Back in London in 1790, he rented a house in Charlotte St. In 1792 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. In the same year he published Observations on the Politics of France. He died, unmarried, at Ariano in Italy on 16 Jul. 1795: obituary notices attributed his death to exhaustion from the stresses of recent journeys. (ODNB 7 Jul. 2022; ancestry.com 7 Jul. 2022; E. L. de Montluzin, “Attributions of Authorship in the Gentleman’s Magazine 1731-1868,” bsuva.org; GM Aug. 1795, 704-5; Derby Mercury 17 Sept. 1795; Katherine Turner, British Travel Writers in Europe, 1750-1800 [2017])

 

Books written (1):