Thompson Cooper


Thompson Cooper was an English journalist, man of letters, and compiler of reference works. He became a specialist in biographical information, and is noted as the most prolific contributor to the Victorian era Dictionary of National Biography, for which he wrote 1423 entries.

Life

Thompson Cooper was the son of Charles Henry Cooper, a Cambridge solicitor and antiquarian. Educated privately in Cambridge, Cooper was nominally articled to his father, and joined him in his antiquarian pursuits. He became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries aged 23, and at some point converted to Roman Catholicism.
As a young man, he was a parliamentary reporter, and developed an interest in shorthand. His Parliamentary Short-Hand was published in 1858. Cooper became sub-editor on the Daily Telegraph in 1861, and the paper's parliamentary reporter in 1862. In 1866 he began a long connection with The Times: he was the paper's parliamentary reporter 1866–1886, its summary-writer for the House of Commons 1886–98, and from 1898 its summary-writer for the House of Lords.