Samuel Carter Hall

Samuel Carter Hall (9 May 1800 – 11 March 1889) was an Irish-born Victorian journalist who is best known for his editorship of ''The Art Journal'' and for his much-satirised personality.

Early years

Hall was born at the Geneva Barracks in Waterford, Ireland. His London-born father was Robert Hall (1753 – 10 January 1836), an army officer and, while in Ireland, engaged in working copper mines which ruined him. His mother supported the family of 12 children with her own business in Cork. He married Ann Kent (b. 1765, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire) at Topsham, 6 April 1790.
Hall was the fourth son.

In 1821, he left Ireland and went to London. He entered law studies at the Inner Temple in 1824, but never practised, though he was finally called to the bar in 1841. Instead, he became a reporter and editor, including:
* Reporter, Parliamentary (1823)
* Editor, 'Literary Observer'
* Art reviews/criticism, the ''British Press'' (same period)
* Reporter, ''Representative'' (1826)
* Reporter, ''New Times'' (1826)
* Founder/editor, ''The Amulet, a Christian and Literary Remembrancer'', (annually, 1826–1837)
* Editor, ''Spirit and Manners of the Age'' (1826)
* Editor, ''Morning Journal'' (1829–30)
* Sub-editor/Editor ''New Monthly Magazine'' (1830–1836)'s Juvenile Library
* Author, "History of France", ''Colburn''
* Writer, ''Watchman'', Wesleyan Methodist newspaper, (1835)
* Start-up, ''The Town'', conservative whig journal, (1836)
* Sub-editor, ''John Bull'' (1837)
* General manager, ''Britannia'' (1839)

Art magazine years

In 1839, Hodgson & Graves, print publishers, employed Hall to edit their new publication, ''Art Union Monthly Journal''. Not long after, Hall purchased a chief share of the periodical. By 1843, he started giving an expensive, unprofitable novelty, sculpture engravings. In 1848, with Hall still unable to turn a profit, the London publisher George Virtue purchased into the ''Art Union Monthly Journal'', retaining Hall as editor. Virtue renamed the periodical ''The Art Journal'' in 1849.

In 1851, Hall engraved 150 pictures from the private collection of the Queen and Prince Albert, and the engravings were featured in the journal's Great Exhibition edition. Though this edition was quite popular, the journal remained unprofitable, forcing Hall to sell his share of ''The Art Journal'' to Virtue, but staying on as editor.

As editor, Hall exposed the profits that custom-houses were earning by importing Old Masters, and showed how paintings are manufactured in England. While ''The Art Journal'' became notable for its honest portrayal of fine arts, the consequence of Hall's actions was the almost unsaleability of old masters such as a Raphael or a Titian. His intention was to support modern British art by promoting young artists and attacking the market for unreliable old masters. The early issues of the Journal strongly supported the artists of The Clique and attacked the Pre-Raphaelites. Hall remained deeply unsympathetic to Pre-Raphaeliism, publishing several attacks upon the movement. Hall resigned the editorship in 1880, and was granted a Civil List pension for his long and valuable services to literature and art.

Personal life

His wife, Anna Maria Fielding (1800–1881), became well known (publishing as "Mrs S.C. Hall"), for her numerous articles, novels, sketches of Irish life, and plays. Two of the last, ''The Groves of Blarney'' and ''The French Refugee'', were produced in London with success. She also wrote a number of children's books, and was practically interested in various London charities, several of which she helped to found.

Hall's notoriously sanctimonious personality was often satirised, and he is regularly cited as the model for the character of Pecksniff in Charles Dickens's novel ''Martin Chuzzlewit''. As Julian Hawthorne wrote,

Hall was a genuine comedy figure. Such oily and voluble sanctimoniousness needed no modification to be fitted to appear before the footlights in satirical drama. He might be called an ingenuous hypocrite, an artless humbug, a veracious liar, so obviously were the traits indicated innate and organic in him rather than acquired. Dickens, after all, missed some of the finer shades of the character; there can be little doubt that Hall was in his own private contemplation as shining an object of moral perfection as he portrayed himself before others. His perversity was of the spirit, not of the letter, and thus escaped his own recognition. His indecency and falsehood were in his soul, but not in his consciousness; so that he paraded them at the very moment that he was claiming for himself all that was their opposite.

Hall was a convinced spiritualist. He was the chairman for the British National Association of Spiritualists, in 1874. Podmore, Frank. (2011 edition, originally published 1902). ''Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism. Volume 2''. Cambridge University Press. p. 169.

Bibliography

''The Amulet: A Christian and Literary Remembrancer''
(1833)

''Gems of the Modern Poets: With Biographical Notices''
(1842)
* ''The Book of British Ballads'' (1842)
* ''The Gallery of Modern Sculpture'' (1849–54)
* ''The royal gallery of art, ancient and modern: engravings from the private collections of Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and the art heir-looms of the crown, at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and Osborne'', (Editor) 854?
* ''The Vernon Gallery of British Art'', London, 1854

''Memoirs of Great Men and Women of the Age, From Personal Acquaintance''
(1871)
* ''Haddon Hall. An Illustrated Guide'' illustrated by Llewellynn Jewitt (1871)
* ''The Trial of Sir Jasper: A Temperance Tale in Verse'' (1873)
* ''An Old Story: A Temperance Tale in Verse'' (1875)
* ''A Memoir of Thomas Moore'' (1879)

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''Retrospect of a Long Life, from 1815 to 1883''
(1883)

''The Use of Spiritualism?''
(1884)

Notes

References

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External links

* (names that contain "S. C. Hall")
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Samuel Carter

1800 births
1889 deaths
19th-century British journalists
19th-century male writers
Irish folklorists
British male journalists
English art critics
English book editors
English spiritualists