Hope, Thomas (1769 -1831)

Thomas Hope was the eldest son of John Hope, a wealthy merchant of Amsterdam, and his wife, P. B. Vander Hoeven. He was educated as an architect, and after much travelling and studying in Egypt, Greece and Spain, he settled in England about 1796, and purchased a house in Duchess Street, near Cavendish Square in London, and another at Deepdene in Surrey, where he formed a large collection of pictures and works of art. On 16 April 1806 he married Louisa Beresford, daughter of William de la Poer Beresford, Lord Decies and Archbishop of Tuam. Thomas Hope published a number of works on architecture and costume, but his best known work is the romance Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Greek written at the close of the eighteenth century, which appeared anonymously in 1815. He was a Fellow of The Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. The Deepdene Library was sold in London in July 1917.