Thomas Catling was educated at private schools in Cambridge and at the Working Men's College, Oakley Square, London Borough of Camden.
[8] His journalist work outside of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper consisted mainly of his editorship, from 1878 to 1890, of the literary reviews for Daily Chronicle.
[7] Catling travelled in 1893 through the United States of America from its east coast to its west coast and to Canada, in 1898 to Palestine and Syria, in 1900 to Egypt up the Nile to Khartoum, in 1901 to Algeria and, especially, Kabylia, in 1903 to the Egyptian Desert and to Spain, in 1904 to Corsica, in 1905 to Egypt's capital Cairo, in 1906 to Austria, and in 1907 to Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina.
[7] In 1904 his eldest son, Thomas Thurgood Catling (1863–1939),[10][11] became the editor-in-chief of Household Words under the ownership of the Edward Lloyd Company.
[14] The book's 224 pages contain a 2-page introduction by Harry Lawson, 2½ pages of concluding remarks by Catling, and brief literary contributions by 53 different authors, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Marie Corelli, Beatrice Harraden, Alfred Sutro, William Pett Ridge, Jerome K. Jerome, Desmond Coke (1879–1931), Mary Stuart Boyd (1860–1937), Alice Meynell, E. Temple Thurston, Silas K. Hocking, Clare Jerrold, Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, Tom Gallon, Catherine Gasquoine Hartley, Rabbi Adler, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, George Brown Burgin (1856–1944), William Leonard Courtney, Charles James Wills (1842–1912), Mrs. C. N. Williamson, Oliver Madox Hueffer, Charles Garvice, H. B. Marriott Watson, F. Anstey, Walter M. Gallichan, A. Winnington-Ingram, The Lord Bishop of London, Coulson Kernahan, Arthur Morrison, Walter Jerrold, Harold Ashton, and Frederick Miller.