Surtees, Robert Smith (sûr`tēz), 1803–64, English novelist. He created John Jorrocks, the sporting grocer, who appears in Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities (1838), a series of humorous sketches first published in the New Sporting Magazine, which Surtees had helped to found in 1831. The novel Handley Cross (1843) continued the career of Jorrocks. Surtees's other novels include Hawbuck Grange (1847), Hillingdon Hall (1845), Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour (1853), Ask Mamma (1858), Plain or Ringlets? (1860), and Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds (1865). Surtees knew English hunting life well, and his books have a tone of lusty humor and hearty satire. Many of his sketches were enhanced by the spirited illustrations of John Leech.

Bibliography

See Hunting Scenes from Surtees (comp. by L. Gough, 1953).

Surtees, Robert Smith

(born May 17, 1805, The Riding, Northumberland, Eng.—died March 16, 1864, Brighton, Sussex) English novelist. Passionately addicted to riding to hounds from his youth, Surtees devoted nearly all his writings to horses and riding. In 1831 he launched New Sporting Magazine. His famous comic character Mr. Jorrocks, a blunt Cockney grocer entirely given over to fox hunting, appeared in Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities (1838), Handley Cross (1843), and Hillingdon Hall (1845). Among his other novels, which also portray the boredom, ill manners, discomfort, and coarse food of English provincial life, are Hawbuck Grange (1847) and Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds (1865).