Background
Brooks was the son of William Brooks, architect, who died on 11 Dec. 1867, aged 80, by his wife Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of William Sabine of Islington.
Brooks was the son of William Brooks, architect, who died on 11 Dec. 1867, aged 80, by his wife Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of William Sabine of Islington.
After his earlier education Shirley Brooks was articled, on 24 April 1832, to his uncle, Mr. Charles Sabine of Oswestry, for the term of five years, and passed the Incorporated Law Society's examination in November 1838, but there is no record of his ever having become a solicitor; for the natural bent of his genius impelled him, like Dickens and Disraeli, to lighter studies, and he forsook law for literature.
During five sessions he occupied a seat in the reporters' gallery of the House of Commons, as the writer of the parliamentary summary in the Morning Chronicle.
In 1853 he was sent by that journal as special commissioner to inquire into the questions connected with the subject of labour and the poor in Russia, Syria, and Egypt. His letters from these countries were afterwards collected and published in the sixth volume of the Travellers' Library, under the title of the Russians of the South.