Silas Kitto Hocking (24 March 1850 – 15 September 1935) was an Cornish novelist and Methodist preacher. He was born at St Stephen-in-Brannel, Cornwall, to James Hocking, part owner of a tin mine, and his wife Elizabeth. In 1870 he was ordained as a minister. Working in different parts of England over the next few years, he wrote his first novel, Alec Green, while living in Liverpool in 1878. It was, however, with his second novel that he won great fame; Her Benny, a story of the street children of Liverpool. This sold over a million copies. All in all he wrote fifty books.
Kitto was also politically active, for the Liberal party. He died in Highgate, Middlesex, and was survived by his wife, Esther Mary, to whom he had been married since 1876. Together they had one son and two daughters. Through his mother he was related both to the biblical scholar John Kitto, and to HDF Kitto, the eminent professor of Greek.[1] His brother was Joseph Hocking (1860–1937), also a novelist and Methodist minister, and his sister, Salome (1859-1927), was also a novelist.
Silas Hocking is buried in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, along with his son, who died of Spanish flu in 1919, and his wife.
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