R.H. [Richard Henry or Hengist] Horne
1802-84
R.H. Horne was educated at the Sandhurst military academy. He was a poet, critic and editor. His best known literary work is the epic poem Orion (1843), but he wrote much and contributed to Charles Dickens' Daily News and Household Words. Horne also edited the periodical the Monthly Repository in the 1830s and The New Spirit of the Age (1844), the collection of essays on contemporary writers from which his and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett's essay on Thomas Carlyle derives.
Horne was also one of those commissioned by Parliament to inquire into the working conditions of children in the 1840s, the published descriptions of the conditions were drawn on by numerous writers including Barrett Browning in "The Cry of the Children". Later in life, Horne travelled to Australia (at which point he changed his middle name to Hengist) and held a variety of official posts there before returning to England and a government pension.
TEXTS:
From Parliamentary Reports on Children's Employment