Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour

Robert Smith Surtees (1803-1864) was an English editor, novelist and sporting writer. Educated to be a solicitor, Surtees soon began to contribute to the Sporting Magazine, and in 1831 he published a treatise on the law relating to horses and particularly the law of warranty, entitled The Horseman's Manual. In the following year he helped to found the New Sporting Magazine. To this periodical he contributed between 1832 and 1834 the papers which were afterwards collected and published as Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities. This humorous narrative of the sporting experiences of a cockney grocer, which suggested the more famous Pickwick Papers of Charles Dickens, is the work by which Surtees is chiefly remembered, though his novel Handley Cross, published in 1843, in which the character of "Jorrocks" is reintroduced as a master of fox-hounds, also enjoyed a wide popularity. The later novels by Surtees included Hillingdon Hall (1845), in which "Jorrocks" again appears, Hawbuck Grange (1847), Mr Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853), Ask Mamma (1858), Plain or Ringlets (1860) and Mr Facey Romford's Hounds (1865). The last of these novels appeared after the author's death