Norman Hope was born in Lewisham, Kent, but after migrating to Australia, commenced his artistic career as a junior draftsman with the Department of Public Lands, Queensland, in 1915. During the mid-1940s, he drew covers for pulp novels from the Currawong Publishing Company and illustrated the children's book, The Sandman and Other Fairy Stories, by Dorothy Skiller and Alan Skiller (qq.v.) (Peter Huston Publishers, Sydney, NSW, ca.1945). Hope wrote music for the Sydney Gang Show, the amateur concert series staged by Scouts Australia throughout the 1940s, and published the accompanying sheet music for such compositions as From Dusk till Dawn (Norman Hope Studio, Sydney, NSW, ca.1942). Hope had a series of tropical water-colour studies exhibited at Kozminsky's Lower Gallery (Melbourne, VIC) in October 1953.
