born May 17, 1803, 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).