April 10th Salome Hocking (Death)

The once famous, but now largely forgotten, novelist Salome Hocking (1859 – 1927) was a member of the most successful, Cornish – born, literary family.  Born in St Stephen-in-Brannel, she was the sister of Silas Hocking (September 15th) and Joseph Hocking (March 4th) .

Daughter of a miner who turned to farming due to the decline in his industry, Salome was working on the corn fields when an accident caused her shoulder and hip to turn in opposite directions resulting in a serious spinal injury which she did not report and left untreated merely complaining about her ‘bad back’. 

Following the early death of her father, Salome turned to teaching at Coombe Village School and writing stories set in Cornish mining, farming and seagoing areas.

During the 1880s she produced five novels in quick succession – ‘Granny’s Hero’ (1885); ‘The Fortunes of Riverside or Waiting and Winning’ (1885); ‘Norah Lang’ (1886); ‘Jacky’ (1887) and ‘Chronicles of a Quiet Family’ (1888) followed by a pseudonymous  novel ‘A Conquered Self’ under the name S. Moore-Carew.

Salome married the publisher Arthur Charles Fifield on Christmas Eve 1894 and, much later, using her maiden name, she published a memoir of her home village, ‘Some Old Cornish Folk’ (1903).

 

 

   
 
 
 


                                                                                                                                                      Previous                                 Next