author
Thomas Gordon Hake
1809–1895
A Victorian physician who gradually gave himself over to poetry, he became known for imaginative verse and for his friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His life joined medicine, literature, and the artistic circles of 19th-century England.
2 Audiobooks
Memoirs of Eighty Years
by Thomas Gordon Hake
About the author
Thomas Gordon Hake was an English physician and poet, born in Leeds on March 10, 1809, and died on January 11, 1895. He studied medicine in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, practiced as a doctor for part of his career, and later devoted himself more fully to writing.
His literary career stretched across much of the 19th century. Hake published poetry from a young age, but his reputation grew in later life, especially through work that connected him with the Pre-Raphaelite circle. He is often remembered as a thoughtful, distinctive Victorian poet and as a close friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
That combination of doctor and poet gives his story a special interest: he moved between scientific training and imaginative writing at a time when both worlds were changing quickly. His books are less widely read today than those of some of his contemporaries, but they still offer a glimpse of a writer who followed his own path.