Theodore Hook once said of himself, "Give me a story to tell, and I can tell it, but I cannot create." This self-assessment aptly sums up the literary career of an author almost completely forgotten now, but one who was an important figure in the 1820s and 1830s and served as a link between eighteenth-century and Victorian novelists.

Theodore Edward Hook was born in London on 22 September 1788, to an artistic family. His father was James Hook, a noted musician who wrote more than two thousand songs; his mother, the former Miss Madden, wrote a farce titled The Double Disguise (1784); and his older brother, James, wrote librettos and novels.

Hook was a spirited youth, which resulted in his attending several schools, including Harrow, where two of his classmates were George Gordon, Lord Byron, and Robert Peel. There is a tale that, on Hook's first day at school, Byron dared...