author
Edwin Paxton Hood
1820–1885
A self-educated English Congregational minister, he turned a life shaped by poverty and preaching into a long career as a writer, biographer, and essayist. His books range from religious works to lively studies of figures such as Oliver Cromwell, Isaac Watts, and John Milton.
3 Audiobooks
Isaac Watts; his life and writings, his homes and friends
by Edwin Paxton Hood
About the author
Born in London in 1820, Edwin Paxton Hood grew up in difficult circumstances and was largely self-educated. He became a Congregational minister and built a parallel career as a prolific writer, bringing together religious conviction, biography, and literary history in a way that reached a broad Victorian readership.
Hood served in several pastorates, including at Nibley in Gloucestershire and later in London. Alongside his ministry, he wrote extensively on major historical and religious figures, with books on Oliver Cromwell, Isaac Watts, John Milton, and other well-known names, as well as essays and devotional works.
He died in Paris in 1885. Today he is remembered as a hardworking nineteenth-century man of letters whose writing joined popular biography with the culture of English Nonconformity.