British Fictional Characters: Mr Jorrocks

Mr Jorrocks is a humorous character in books and magazine stories created by Robert Smith Surtees. Jorrocks is a London grocer (owner of a food shop) who loves horse racing and hunting foxes. Like many Londoners, he speaks Cockney English.
He was born on May 17, 1805 and died on March 16, 1864 in Brighton, Sussex. This English novelist was passionately addicted to riding and to hunting with hounds from his youth and devoted nearly all his writings to horses and riding. In 1831 he launched New Sporting Magazine. His famous comic character Mr. Jorrocks appeared in Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities (1838), Handley Cross (1843), and Hillingdon Hall (1845). Among his other novels, which also portray the boredom, ill manners, discomfort, and coarse food of English provincial life, are Hawbuck Grange (1847) and Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds (1865).
As a creator of comic personalities, Surtees is still very readable today. Thackeray envied him his powers of observation, while William Morris considered him 'a master of life' and ranked him with Charles Dickens.