Thomas Dixon

Thomas Dixon (1831–1880) was a working class autodidact and literary correspondent of Sunderland in the north-east of England. A cork-cutter by trade, he lodged with a close friend of the head of the School of Art in Newcastle, William Bell Scott, and through this became acquainted with many of the artists later known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and others in their circle, including Tennyson, Thomas Carlyle and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

His correspondence with the Pre-Raphaelites, some of whom appear to have found him a nuisance, was important in bringing the Pitman Poet Joseph Skipsey to wider notice. He enjoyed a lengthy correspondence with John Ruskin between February and December 1867. Ruskin published his half of the correspondence, with excerpts from Dixon in the appendices, Time and Tyde by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work. The letters touched on themes of honesty in work, fairness and cooperation, in keeping with his essays engaging with John Stuart Mills, Adam Smith and Malthus.