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ROBERT SMITH SURTEES (1803-1864)

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Originally appearing in Volume V26, Page 142 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ROBERT SMITH SURTEES (1803-1864)  ,
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English novelist and sporting writer, was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, a member of an old Durham
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family . Educated to be a
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solicitor, Surtees soon began to contribute to the Sporting
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Magazine, and in 1831 he published a
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treatise on the law
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relating to horses and particularly the law of
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warranty, entitled The Horseman's
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Manual . In the following
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year he helped to,found the New Sporting Magazine, of which he was the editor for the next five years . To this periodical he contributed between 1832 and 1834 the papers which were afterwards collected and published in 1838 as Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities . This humorous narrative of the sporting experiences of a
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cockney
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grocer, which suggested the more famous Pickwick Papers of Charles Dickens, is the
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work by which Surtees is chiefly re-membered, though his novel Handley
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Cross, published in 1843, in which the character of "Jorrocks " is reintroduced as a master of fox-hounds, also enjoyed a wide popularity . The former of these two books was illustrated by " Phiz " (H . K . Browne), and the latter, as well as most of Surtees's subsequent novels, by John Leech, whose pictures of " Jorrocks " are everywhere familiar and were the chief means of ensuring the lasting popularity of that humorous creation . In 1838, on the
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death of his
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father, Surtees, whose elder
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brother had died in 1831, inherited the family
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property of Hamsterley Hall, where he lived for the rest of his
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life . The later novels by Surtees included Hillingdon Hall (1845), in which " Jorrocks " again appears; Hawbuck Grange (1847); Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853); Ask Mamma (1858); Plain or Ringlets ? (186o) ; Mr Facey
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Romford's Hounds (1865) . The last of these novels appeared after the author's death, which occurred on the 16th of March 1864 .

In 1841 he married

Elizabeth Jane, daughter of Addison Fenwick of Bishopwearmouth, by whom he had one son and two daughters, the younger of whom, Eleanor, in 1885 married John Prendergast Vereker, afterwards 5th Viscount Gort . See R . S . Surtees, Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities (
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London, 1869), containing a
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biographical memoir of the author; W . P . Frith, John Leech, His Life and Work (2 vols., London, 1891);
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Samuel Halkett and J . Laing,
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Dictionary of
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Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of
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Great Britain (4 vols.,
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Edinburgh, 1882-1888) .

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