Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hodder, James
HODDER, JAMES (fl. 1661), arithmetician, was a writing-master, with a school in Tokenhouse Yard in Lothbury, in 1661. After the fire of 1666, he removed to Bromley-by-Bow, where he kept a boarding-school, but subsequently returned to Lothbury. He was first known as the author of ‘Hodder's Arithmetick,’ a popular manual upon which Cocker based his better known work. The two books are for the most part identical. Cocker's chief improvement is the new mode of division which Hodder did not give. The work (dedicated to Josias Dewye, merchant, of London) was first published in 1661. A third edition is dated 1664, a ninth 1672, a thirteenth 1681, a fifteenth in 1685; other editions are dated 1693, 1697, 1702, and 1739, the last being the twenty-seventh edition. All contain a portrait with verses beneath it. In the early editions it is engraved by Gaywood and in the later by Van Hove. The edition of 1685 is ‘amended’ by Henry Mose, Hodder's friend and successor, who kept a school in Sherborne Lane, Lombard Street. Hodder was also the author of ‘The Penman's Recreation, containing sundry examples of faire writing,’ London (without date), dedicated to Sir Walter Earle, and dated in the Brit. Mus. Cat. ‘1661?’ The specimens are engraved by Edward Cocker [q. v.], with whom, it is plain, Hodder was friendly. Hodder's third work, ‘Decimal Arithmetick, or a Plain and most Methodical way of Teaching the said Art,’ appeared with Gaywood's portrait in 1668, and was dedicated to George Perryer, scrivener, of Lothbury Street.
[De Morgan's Arithmetic Books, 1847; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England; Brit. Mus. Cat.]