Career
After serving in the First World War, with Roy Manning Pike he printed the rare 1926 subscribers" edition of The by T. East. Lawrence. From 1927 to 1936 he worked at the for fine books in mid-Wales. Hodgson joined the Territorial Army (United Kingdom) before the outbreak of war in 1914 and was assigned to the 24th London Battalion of the Royal West Surrey Regiment.
After training he was sent to the front in France.
In March 1915 he was in reserve at the battle of Neuve Chapelle. His first front-line engagements were at the battles of Festubert and Givenchy in May 1915.
At Givenchy he was part of a group that held a German trench overnight under heavy fire and suffered heavy casualties. Hodgson was later involved in the Battle of Loos in September 1915 and the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
In 1917 he was slightly injured and he convalesced in England.
Returning to the front he was drafted into the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers. As a result of a further engagement in April 1918 east of Wulverghem near Messines he fell into a shell hole and found a mud-encrusted book He stuffed this into his pocket and carried on, but he was knocked out by a shell explosion.
When he became conscious he discovered that the book was a Bible.
An officer told him to keep it for luck. 92 years later the original owner of the Bible was traced.
Suffering from shell-shock, Hodgson was consigned to light duties for the remainder of the war. Trained as a skilled printer, in 1923 Hodgson was contracted by Roy Manning Pike to help print the valuable subscribers" edition of The by T. East. Lawrence.
After completing work on the Seven Pillars in 1926 Hodgson moved in 1927 to the in mid-Wales, which specialised in the production of fine books
He remained there urntil 1936. In her history of the, Dorothy A. Harrop reports that Robert Maynard (the Controller of the Press) "came to be of the opinion that Hodgson was probably the best pressman in the country at that time. … Hodgson’s name appears for the first time in the Colophon and his masterly touch is already apparent.
… The printing of these…… represents a triumph for Hodgson."
Concerned about the employment prospects of his growing family, Hodgson returned to London in 1936.
Hodgson continued to work as a printer until he retired in 1963.
