Thomas Jefferson Hogg

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Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1792–1862) was a British biographer.

The son of John Hogg, a country gentleman of Durham, he was educated at Durham Grammar School, and University College, Oxford, where he made the acquaintance of Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose lifelong friend and biographer he became. Associated with Shelley in the famous pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, he shared in the expulsion from the University which it entailed, and embarked on a legal career, being called to the Bar in 1817.

In 1832 he contributed to Bulwer Lytton's New Monthly Magazine his Reminiscences of Shelley, which was highly regarded. As a result, he was commissioned to write a biography of the poet, of which he completed two volumes, but in such a way that the material with which he had been entrusted was withdrawn. The work, which is probably unique in the annals of biography, gives a vivid and credible picture of Shelley, but shows no true appreciation of him as a poet, and reflects with at least equal prominence the humorously eccentric personality of the author, which makes it unusually entertaining. Other works by Hogg were Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff, and a book of travels, Two Hundred and Nine Days (1827). He married the widow of Williams, Shelley's friend, who was drowned along with him.

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.