Henry Cockton
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[7] Henry Cockton does not seem to have made much money from novel-writing, as the 1841 census showed him and his family as resident in 165 Blackfriars Road, Southwark, where they were lodgers of Maria Dowie, a widowed dressmaker.
[12] The Love Match (1845), about a general's daughter who marries a stable hand, is of some interest for descriptions of the contemporary Newmarket horse-racing community: this featured a terse message announcing it would probably be the author's last book.
His failure to make a financial profit from writing was probably the primary reason for his change of career, and he returned to Bury St. Edmunds to run The Seven Stars for his mother-in-law.
[14] The Steward: a Romance of Real Life (1850), describes the downfall of George Croly, a Suffolk country gentleman, who is categorically lambasted as an evil, duplicitous person.
[19] The name Valentine Vox has been adopted as a stage name by Jack Riley, a popular performer of and author about ventriloquism, and used as a title of a record album released by Chris Jagger in 1974.
