befriended the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the American journalist Ambrose Bierce, both frequent contributors to Fun. Hood wrote the burlesque, Robinson Crusoe; or, The Injun Bride and the Injured Wife (1867), together with Gilbert, H. J. Byron, H. S. Leigh and Arthur Sketchley. Hood's Fun gang also included playwright Thomas W. Robertson, among others. Hood's first wife, Susan, (on occasion called "Mrs Tom"), died in 1873, at the age of only thirty-seven. He married Justine Rudolphine Charotton (b. 1844/5) on 15 August 1874, only a few months before his own death. Hood died suddenly in his cottage at Peckham Rye, Surrey on 20 November 1874 and was buried in Nunhead cemetery. Controversy over Alice in Wonderland In 1887 the literary critic Edward Salmon suggested that Lewis Carroll had plagiarised Hood's From Nowhere to the North Pole (1875) when writing Alice: Carroll replied a month later, in a terse letter to editor of The Nineteenth Century: In 1889 Carroll even inserted an announcement in the back of The Nursery "Alice", correcting his previous explanation and further denying Tom Hood's influence: Legacy and honours British dramatist Thomas W. Robertson dedicated his play Society (1864) to Hood — "To my dear friend Tom Hood this play is dedicated." His sister, Frances Freeling Broderip, wrote a memoir of him that was published with an 1877 edition of his poems. Ambrose Bierce's short story "The Damned Thing" was inspired by an alleged encounter with Tom Hood's spirit. In 1925, Tom Hood School in Leytonstone was renamed after Hood. Notes References External links 1835 births 1874 deaths Children's fantasy novels English fantasy writers English illustrators English male poets People educated at University College School English male short story writers English short story writers English male novelists 19th-century British short story writers