Author: Hone, William
Biography:
HONE, William (1780-1842: ODNB)
A controversial author, publisher, and champion of the free press, Hone was born to Frances Maria (Stawell) and William Hone in Bath, Somerset, on 3 June 1780 and baptised on 26 Aug. They moved to London in 1783, where Hone’s Methodist father worked as a solicitor’s clerk. Hone’s intermittent schooling ended when he was twelve but he educated himself with voracious reading and followed his father into the same occupation. He was a precocious writer: according to ODNB his proud parents had an anti-Jacobin poem by him printed as a broadside in 1793 (no extant copy appears to be recorded). Many of the details of his early life come from his own autobiography of 1841. Hone’s interests and opinions soon diverged from those of his parents, as he explored the theatrical life of London, fraternized with rationalists and Unitarians, and joined the radical London Corresponding Society (LCS). On 19 Jul. 1800 he married Sarah Johnson (1781-1864), with whom he had 13 children. She was the daughter of his landlady, who helped him set up in business as a bookseller and saw them through some of the years of removals, bankruptcies, and periods of imprisonment that followed. Starting in partnership with his LCS colleague John Bone, Hone became a prominent reformist author and publisher. His finest hour came in Dec. 1817 when Hone, charged with blasphemy and sedition on account of three of his prose parodies, triumphantly defended himself and was acquitted in three separate trials held on successive days. This event made him a popular hero and temporarily improved his finances. His fame grew with the publication of the verse satires that he wrote between 1819 and 1821, listed here. In the 1820s, however, he began to publish more historical material, such as the miscellanies of the Everyday Book, the Table Book, and the Year Book. After his final bankruptcy in 1830, he found work as a sub-editor on an evangelical newspaper, The Patriot; converted to Congregationalism, and adopted somewhat less radical political views. (The paper’s editor, Josiah Conder, supported applications by Hone and his wife to the RLF.) Increasing ill health led to his retirement in 1840, whereupon the family moved for the last time, to Tottenham, where he died on 6 Nov. 1842. He was buried in Abney Park cemetery, Stoke Newington. (ODNB 16 Oct. 2022; findmypast.com 16 Oct. 2022; RLF # 781) HJ
Other Names:
- W. Hone