The editor, publisher, poet, and humorist, Thomas Hood was born in London. After his father, who was a bookseller, died in 1811, Hood worked in a counting house until illness forced him to move to Dundee, Scotland, to recover with relatives. In 1818 he returned to London to work as an engraver.
This information is about his visit to Patrick Matthew in the Summer of 1815. that is some 15 years before Matthew wrote his bombshell book of 1831.
Right so, I'm taking the train to Dundee later this month for a major press event on my book "Science Fraud" and on The Patrick Matthew Violin and Andy Sutton's poem about it all.
I have my "train book" entitled "Hood in Scotland" to read.
As a keen fly fisher myself Thomas Hood's stay in Dundee and then his meeting to go trout fishing with Patrick Matthew in the Carse of Gowrie, where I will also be headed from Dundee, is just one more set of coincidences in this story.
Mike Sutton