Editing William Hope Hodgson (section)

===Physical culture, essays and poetry===
In 1899, at age 22, he opened a School of Physical Culture in Ainsworth Street, [[Blackburn]], England, as "the inventor and teacher of a system that will cure indigestion". The School offered tailored exercise regimes for personal training.<ref name="hh">Kalush, William, and Sloman, Larry. ''The Secret Life of Houdini : the Making of America's First Superhero''.  London : Simon & Schuster, Limited, 2008. {{ISBN|978-1-84739-619-8}} (pp. 143-146).</ref> Among his customers were members of the Blackburn police force. In 1902, Hodgson himself appeared on stage with handcuffs and other restraining devices supplied by the Blackburn police department and applied the restraints to [[Harry Houdini]], who had previously escaped from the Blackburn jail.<ref name="hh" /> His behaviour towards Houdini generated controversy; the escape artist had some difficulty removing his restraints, complaining that Hodgson had deliberately injured him and jammed the locks of his handcuffs.<ref name="hh" />

Hodgson was not shy of publicity, and in another notable stunt, rode a bicycle down a street so steep that it had stairs, an event written up in the local paper. Despite his reputation, he eventually found that he could not earn a living running his personal training business, which was seasonal in nature, and shut it down. He began instead writing articles such as "Physical Culture versus Recreative Exercises" (published in 1903). One of these articles, "Health from Scientific Exercise", featured photographs of Hodgson himself demonstrating his exercises. The market for such articles seemed to be limited, however; so, inspired by authors such as [[Edgar Allan Poe]], [[H. G. Wells]], [[Jules Verne]] and [[Arthur Conan Doyle]],<ref name="wisker">{{cite book|author=Wisker, Gina|title=Horror fiction: An Introduction|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|date= 2005|isbn= 0-8264-1561-X|pages= 75–76}}</ref> Hodgson turned his attention to fiction, publishing his first short story, [[List of stories by William Hope Hodgson#"The Goddess of Death"|"The Goddess of Death"]], in 1904, followed shortly by "[[A Tropical Horror]]" (1905). He also contributed to an article in ''[[The Grand Magazine]]'', taking the "No" side in a debate on the topic "Is the Mercantile Navy Worth Joining?" In this piece, Hodgson laid out in detail his negative experiences at sea, including facts and figures about salaries. This led to a second article in ''[[The Nautical Magazine]]'', an exposé on the subject of apprenticeships; at the time, families often were forced to pay to have boys accepted as apprentices. Hodgson began to give paid lectures, illustrated with his photography in the form of colorized slides, about his experiences at sea.

Although he wrote a number of poems, only a handful were published during his lifetime; several, such as "[[Madre Mia]]" (1907), appeared as dedications to his novels. Apparently cynical about the prospects of publishing his poetry, in 1906 he published an article in ''The Author'' magazine, suggesting that poets could earn money by writing inscriptions for tombstones. Many of his poems were published by his widow in two posthumous collections, but some 48 poems were not published until their appearance in the collection ''The Lost Poetry of William Hope Hodgson'' (2005).