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Author: Hodgson, Philip

Biography:

HODGSON, Philip (fl 1775)

The title page of the only known publication by this author identifies him as plain “Philip Hodgson, of Newcastle upon Tyne”—not MA or Esq. or Rev.—and a brief introduction explains that the poem had first appeared in a shorter version in the Lady’s Magazine. There is a Latin epigraph from Cicero. Hodgson was not a graduate of either university but he apparently had at least a basic classical education and he had been making occasional contributions of both songs and music to the Lady’s Magazine. No plausible birth or death record has been found anywhere in England. The only prominent Newcastle men of that name in the 1770s and 1780s (and they might have been one and the same) were an upholsterer (listed 1774, 1777) and a tinplate worker who, with his wife Ann, had at least five children baptised in Newcastle between 1776 and 1785. Both occupations seem improbable though not incompatible with literary aspirations, but there is no evidence to link either of these men certainly with the poem. (ancestry.com 28 Sept. 2022; findmypast.com 28 Sept. 2022; Lady’s Magazine 4 [1773] 661)

 

Books written (1):

Newcastle : [no publisher: "for the Author"], 1775