![]() The "hippo" of the title (occasionally referred to as "the happy hippo" and given to wallowing in long baths) is Edward (Ted/Tedward) Lennox Wallace, an aging, lecherous, one-time hell-raising poet, reduced by diminishing poetic talent to working as a theatre critic. ![]() (Hence cover designs picturing an actual hippopotamus or Fry himself in a bathtub.) The title and epigraph imply as well one of the novel's themes: the practicality of poetry and how that helps Wallace, a poet, regard the "miracles" in the story with a sceptical eye. ![]() The title draws comparisons between the animal as described in the poem and the main character, Ted Wallace, a slovenly man who enjoys long baths. Eliot, whose first verse is quoted as the epigraph: The novel's title comes from the poem of the same name by T. Wallace is an alcoholic washed-up poet and theatre critic who, having been fired from his newspaper job, accepts a lucrative commission from his terminally ill goddaughter to investigate rumours of miracle healings at Swafford Hall, country mansion of Wallace's old friend Lord Logan. ![]() Written in part as an epistolary novel, it is largely narrated by the main character Edward "Ted" Wallace. The Hippopotamus (1994) is a comic novel by Stephen Fry. ![]()
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