Class VIII Unit-2 On Telling a Tale-Matilda (Ballad)

Hilaire Belloc

Belloc was born on 27 July, 1870 in La Celle-Saint-Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters, and political activist. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910. 
Cloud, France to a French father and an English mother. He grew up in England where much of his boyhood was spent in Slindon, West Sussex, for which he often felt homesick in later life. 
His mother Elizabeth Rayner Parkes (1829–1925) was also a writer and a great-granddaughter of the English chemist Joseph Priestley. 
After being educated at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, Belloc served his term of military service, as a French citizen, with an artillery regiment near Toul in 1891.
After his military service, Belloc proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, as a History scholar. He went on to obtain first-class honours in History.
He was powerfully built, with great stamina, and walked extensively in Britain and Europe. While courting his future wife Elodie, whom he first met in 1890, the impecunious Belloc walked a good part of the way from the midwest of the United States to her home in northern California, paying for lodging at remote farm houses and ranches by sketching the owners and reciting poetry.
 In 1896, he married Elodie Hogan, an American. In 1906, he purchased land and a house called King's Land at Shipley, West Sussex, where he brought up his family and lived until shortly before his death. Elodie and Belloc had five children before her 1914 death from influenza. After her death, Belloc wore mourning for the remainder of his life, keeping her room exactly as she had left it.
Belloc suffered a stroke in 1941 and never recovered from its effects. He died on 16 July 1953 in Guildford, Surrey, following a fall he had at King's Land. He is buried at the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation of West Grinstead.