writer barrister man of letters
Hogg was born on May 24, 1792 in Norton, England, the eldest of John and Prudentia (née Jones) Hogg's six children. He was given his paternal grandfather's first name and his paternal grandmother's last name. John's father was the son of a wealthy businessman and Prudentia's father was a Welsh clergyman. Although John was trained as a barrister, he did not practise law regularly. He instead devoted his time to managing his estate and serving as a justice of the peace.
Hogg was educated at Durham grammar school, and in 1810 he went up to University College, Oxford, his father's alma mater. There he met and became friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley in October 1810. He later studied law at London’s Middle Temple and became a barrister in 1817.
Hogg and Shelley collaborated on a pamphlet of "mock revolutionary" poetry in late 1810, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, that they attributed to Nicholson herself. She was a mentally unstable washerwoman who in 1786 had attempted to stab King George III with a dessert knife. They also composed a novel together, Lenora, but could not find a printer who was willing to publish such a subversive work. In early 1811, Shelley and Hogg published The Necessity of Atheism, which outraged the Oxford authorities. Although it was published anonymously, suspicion soon fell on the pair. They refused either to acknowledge or to deny writing the work, and were expelled from Oxford as a result. After Shelley’s death in 1822, Hogg was commissioned by the poet’s family to write a biography of him, the first two volumes of which appeared in 1858 under the title The Life of Shelley. This work throws much light on the poet’s character through the use of anecdotes and letters and contains a good deal of material relating to Hogg himself. It was to have been in four volumes; but the Shelley family, objecting to the first two volumes’ focus on Hogg himself, refused him access to sources necessary for completing the Life. In later life Hogg suffered from gout, which forced him to curtail many of his activities. He died in his sleep in 1862 at the age of 70.
(Thomas Jefferson Hogg's account of Shelley's career at Ox...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(Excerpt from The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. 1 of ...)
In 1823 Hogg met Jane Williams. Jane and her common-law husband Edward Ellerker Williams had been housemates of Shelley's shortly before his death. Edward Williams and Shelley died in a boating accident, leaving Jane alone with two young children. Jane was still legally married. Therefore, Hogg risked his family's wrath if he pursued a relationship with her. The couple were initially very discreet, and even denied to close friends that they were romantically involved. The situation was eased by the death of Hogg's father's in late 1823.
