Fragments of a Biography
For reasons explained in the introductory essay on "Discursive Hosts," the BioText does not include a seamless biographical narrative that coherently "covers" Hone's life from its beginning in 1780 to its end in 1842. Instead, this prose account of Hone's life is presented here in a series of fragments, the number of which will likely continue to grow. The present files concentrate on the early years of Hone's life; readers interested in a roughly chronological account should examine the files in the order presented below.
The fragments are listed here in roughly chronological order:
— The Gordon Riots (enter:
William Hone) (1780)
— The Elder William Hone and the
Heritage of Dissent (1770s, 80s)
— A London Childhood--Early
Reading (1783-93)
— Sturm und Drang
in a Revolutionary Decade (1790s)
— Early Public Life (1800-1805)
— John Bone, "Tranquillity,"
and the Poor Laws (1806-07)
— The Bone-Hone Bookshop
and After (1807-13)
— Hone and the London Asylum
(1813-14)
— The Critical Review
and the Case of Edward Vyse (1814-1815)
— The Fenning Case and the Rise of
the Watchdog Press (1815-16)
— Publishing the Parodies:
The Background to Hone's 1817 Censorship Trials (1817)