Cooper, Thomas

▪ British writer

born March 20, 1805, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng.

died July 15, 1892, Lincoln, Lincolnshire

      English writer whose political epic The Purgatory of Suicides (1845) promulgated in verse the principles of Chartism, Britain's first specifically working-class national movement, for which Cooper worked and suffered imprisonment.

      While working as a shoemaker, Cooper read widely, and in 1827 he became a schoolmaster and in 1829 a Methodist preacher. In 1836 he became a journalist, working on newspapers in Lincoln, London, and Leicester, until his embrace of Chartism led to his dismissal in 1841. He then began to edit various Chartist weeklies. In 1842 he toured potteries to urge support for a general strike. He was convicted of sedition in 1843 and spent two years in a Stafford jail, where he wrote The Purgatory of Suicides, a verse epic in which a Dantean vision of the famous suicides of the ancient and modern world is combined with the anticipation of a coming age of liberty and happiness. After his release Cooper worked as a lecturer, and he turned to Christian topics after the recovery of his faith in 1856. He also published three novels (two under the name Adam Hornbook) and wrote an autobiography, The Life of Thomas Cooper (1872). The Paradise of Martyrs, a Christian sequel to The Purgatory of Suicides, was published in 1873. His collected Poetical Works appeared in 1877.

Additional Reading

Robert J. Conklin, Thomas Cooper, the Chartist (1935); Philip Collins, Thomas Cooper, the Chartist (1970).

▪ English bishop and author

Cooper also spelled  Couper  

born c. 1517, , Oxford

died April 29, 1594, Winchester, Hampshire, Eng.

      English bishop and author of a famous dictionary.

      Educated at the University of Oxford, Cooper became master of Magdalen College school and afterward practiced as a physician in Oxford. In 1565 appeared the first edition of his most notable work, Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae. Three other editions followed in 1573, 1578, and 1584.

      Queen Elizabeth I was greatly pleased with the Thesaurus, which became known as Cooper's Dictionary. Cooper, who had been ordained about 1559, was made dean of Christ Church, Oxford, in 1567. Two years later he became dean of Gloucester, in 1571 bishop of Lincoln, and in 1584 bishop of Winchester. Cooper defended the practice and precept of the Church of England against the Roman Catholics on the one hand and against the Martin Marprelate writings and the Puritans on the other.

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