Hoppin, Augustus (1828–1896)

Augustus Hoppin, humorous illustrator, son of Thomas Cole and Harriet (Jones) Hoppin, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on April 13, 1828. His father was a China trader. Hoppin graduated from Brown University in 1848 and Harvard Law School in 1850, but at the beginning of law practice he turned to illustration. His drawings had begun to appear in the late 1840s in many monthly magazines; he subsequently illustrated many humorous books, among which were Oliver Wendell Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858), Washington Irving's Sketch Book (originally published in 1820), and Mark Twain's The Gilded Age (1873). Hoppin also anonymously wrote a number of romances. In 1872 he produced three daily cartoons for the four-page sheet Jubilee Days. His drawings were primarily humorous depictions of polite society. Even on the Bartlett survey of the western boundary of Texas (see BARTLETT, JOHN RUSSELL), which he joined in 1850, Hoppin sketched in a humorous vein. Included in the report of the survey are his drawings Prairie-Dog Town and Stampede of Wild Horses. The report of the survey was published in 1854. Hoppin's brother Thomas, also an illustrator, designed the figures of Saints Peter and Paul for the window in Trinity Church in New York City. Hoppin died in Flushing, New York, in 1896.