ROBERT

See also:

• ROBERT DODSLEY (1703-1764)

DODSLEY (1703-1764)  , English bookseller and miscellaneous writer, was born in 1703 near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school . He is said to have been apprenticed to a stocking-weaver in Mansfield, from whom he ran away, taking service as a footman . In 1729 Dodsley published his first work, Servitude; a Poem .. . written by a Footman, with a preface and postscript ascribed to Daniel Defoe; and a collection of short poems, A Muse in Livery, or the Footman's Miscellany, was published by subscription in 1732, Dodsley's patrons comprising many persons of high rank . This was followed by a satirical farce called The Toyshop (Covent Garden, 1735), in which the toyman indulges in moral observations on his wares, a hint which was probably taken from Thomas Randolph's Conceited Pedlar . The profits accruing from the sale of his works enabled Dodsley to establish himself with the help ofhis friends—Pope lent him £xoo—as a bookseller at the " Tully's Head " in Pall Mall in 1735 . His enterprise soon made him one of the foremost publishers of the day . One of his first publications was Dr Johnson's London, for which he gave ten guineas in 1738 . He published many of Johnson's works, and he suggested and helped to finance the English Dictionary . Pope also made over to Dodsley his interest in his letters . In 1738 the publication of Paul Whitehead's Manners, voted scandalous by the Lords, led to a short imprisonment . Dodsley published for Edward Young and Mark Akenside, and in 1751 brought out Thomas Gray's Elegy .

He also founded several

literary periodicals: The Museum (1746-1767, 3 vols.); The Preceptor containing a general course of education (1748, 2 vols.), with an introduction by Dr Johnson; The World (1753-1756, 4 vols.); and The Annual Register, founded in 1758 with Edmund Burke as editor . To these various works, Horace Walpole, Akenside, Soame Jenyns, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Chesterfield, Burke and others were contributors . Dodsley is, however, best known as the editor of two collections: Select Collection of Old Plays (12 vols., 1744; 2nd edition with notes by Isaac Reed, 12 vols., 1780; 4th edition, by W . C . Hazlitt, 1874-1876, 15 vols.); and A collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748, 3 vols.), which passed through many editions . In 1737 his King and the Miller of Mansfield, a " dramatic tale " of King Henry II., was produced at Drury Lane, and received with much applause; the sequel, Sir John Cockle at Court, a farce, appeared in 1738 . In 1745 he published a collection of his dramatic works, and some poems which had been issued separately, in one volume under the modest title of Trifles . This was followed by The Triumph of Peace, a Masque occasioned by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1749); a fragment, entitled Agriculture, of a long tedious poem in blank verse on Public Virtue (1753); The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (acted at Drury Lane 1739, printed 1741); and an ode, Melpomene (1757) His tragedy of Cleone (1758) had a long run at Covent Garden, 2000 copies being sold on the day of publication, and it passed through four editions within the year . Lord Chesterfield is, however, almost certainly the author of the series of mock chronicles of which The Chronicle of the Kings of England by " Nathan ben Saddi " (1740) is the first, although they were included in the Trifles and " ben Saddi " was received as Dodsley's pseudonym . The Economy of Human Life (175o), a collection of moral precepts frequently reprinted, is also by Lord Chesterfield . In 1759 Dodsley retired, leaving the conduct of the business to his brother James (1724-1797), with whom he had been many years in partnership . He published two more works, The Select Fables of Aesop translated. by R .

D . (1764) and the Works of

William Shenstone (3 vols., 1764-1769) . He died at Durham while on a visit to his friend the Rev . Joseph Spence, on the 23rd of September 1764 . See also Shadows of the Old Booksellers, by Charles Knight (1865), pp . 189-216; " At Tully's Head " in Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 2nd series, by Austin Dobson (1894); E . Solly in The Bibliographer, v . (1884) pp . 57-61 . Dodsley's poems are reprinted with a memoir in A . Chalmers's Works of English Poets, vol. xv . (181o) .