page_title: Henry Cockton
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Cockton
caption_attribution_description: English: An engaved portrait of Henry Cockton, published in 1841.
context_page_description: Henry Cockton was an English novelist, remembered primarily for The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, the Ventriloquist.
  Henry Cockton was born in George Yard, Shoreditch, London, the third of eight children of William and Mary Cockton. His father may have been a weaver. Nothing is known about his childhood or education; all that can be ascertained about his early life is that he spent some years employed in a house of business in Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. Here, on 9 May 1837, he married Ann Howes in St. James's Church. Ann was the daughter of Eleanor Howes, a widow who owned The Seven Stars Inn in Long Brackland, a street in that town. Henry and Ann had a daughter, Eleanor Anne, and a son, Edward Stanley, born in Bury St. Edmunds on 20 December 1839 and 11 December 1841.
  In 1839 Henry Cockton commenced writing The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist. Published by Robert Tyas of London, in the monthly serial format, popularised by Charles Dickens, it was an immediate success, enjoying great popularity and acclaim. Illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn were a prominent feature of this, and most of Henry Cockton's later novels.
context_section_description: Henry Cockton (7 December 1807 – 26 June 1853) was an English novelist, remembered primarily for The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, the Ventriloquist (1839–40).
  Henry Cockton was born in George Yard, Shoreditch, London, the third of eight children of William and Mary Cockton. His father may have been a weaver. Nothing is known about his childhood or education; all that can be ascertained about his early life is that he spent some years employed in a house of business in Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk. Here, on 9 May 1837, he married Ann Howes in St. James's Church (now the Cathedral).  Ann was the daughter of Eleanor Howes, a widow who owned The Seven Stars Inn in Long Brackland, a street in that town. Henry and Ann had a daughter, Eleanor Anne, and a son, Edward Stanley, born in Bury St. Edmunds on 20 December 1839 and 11 December 1841.
  In 1839 Henry Cockton commenced writing The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist. Published by Robert Tyas of London, in the monthly serial format, popularised by Charles Dickens, it was an immediate success, enjoying great popularity and acclaim.  Illustrations by Thomas Onwhyn were a prominent feature of this, and most of Henry Cockton's later novels. The first three chapters are set 'in one of the most ancient and populous boroughs in the county of Suffolk', a thinly disguised Bury St. Edmunds. Valentine Vox teaches himself ventriloquism after seeing a performer in a local tavern, then uses his skills to create mayhem and mischief.  Fearing this will lead him into trouble, his family send him to stay with his uncle Grimwood Goodman in London. This provides unlimited opportunities to perform pranks, such as disrupting political meetings, theatrical performances, educational lectures and social events. Valentine develops a close friendship with Grimwood. Fearing that Grimwood will re-write his will in Valentine's favour, unscrupulous relatives have Grimwood confined in a private lunatic asylum, where he undergoes many horrific experiences. Eventually Valentine finds Grimwood, and liberates him, not by using ventriloquism, but by paying for his release. At the novel's conclusion, Valentine marries the love interest, Louise Raven, and abandons ventriloquism. Valentine's activities as a ventriloquist are quite incredible, showing an impossible, almost super-human level of ability: by the end of the book he has duped literally hundreds of people from all walks of life in all situations, not one of whom ever suspects him. Yet the novel contains no technical information about ventriloquism, and it is doubtful if the author had any practical knowledge of the subject. The completed work contained a preface by Henry Cockton, outlining the scandal of private lunatic asylums. As with Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, he clearly intended to draw attention to a social issue about which he felt strongly.
  Valentine Vox was lauded as one of most amusing and entertaining works of the year, rivalling the popularity of Dickens's novels.  Between 1853 and 1902 over 400,000 copies were published in the UK. It even spawned an imitation: Thomas Peckett Prest wrote a plagiarism, The Adventures of Valentine Vaux, or, the Tricks of a Ventriloquist (1840), using the pseudonym Timothy Portwine.  Valentine Vox was last printed in 1920.  While modern readers will probably gain little from the humour, which consists of one joke, told with repetition, it contains some vividly observed scenes of contemporary London life, which can be read as sources of social history.
  The success of Valentine Vox prompted Richard Bentley to commission Henry Cockton to write Stanley Thorn (1841) for Bentley's Miscellany. This was not an original composition, but a work initiated by Richard Barham in which several authors had been asked to collaborate in a work on the theme of The Rake's Progress, about the downfall of a wealthy young man of property. Henry Cockton was given the manuscripts to adapt and complete, which he did, adding an unconvincing happy ending in place of the tragic end that w
caption: Engraving of Henry Cockton from a portrait by James Warren Childe published as a frontispiece to his third novel George St. George Julian The Prince.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2014:05:31 22:35:42", "Image ExifOffset": "2142", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "0", "Thumbnail YResolution": "0", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4316", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6639", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "C8EFE66F346A443CACB4DB02AB9E42DE", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}