Biography

Robert Dodsley. (1703-1764)

Born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire as the son of a school master. With his brother James Dodsley a London publisher and bookseller. Shop at Tully's Head in Pall Mall. Published works by Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson and of Boswell himself. Also publishers of Laurence Sternes The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759).

Robert Dodsley was also a very active author and playwright. His play The Toyshop: A Dramatic Satire ran at Covent Garden in 1735. In 1758 we wrote the tragedy Cleone.

An active magazine publisher he co-founded, with Edmund Burke, The Annual Register (1758), a yearly chronicle of British and world history which is still being published. He also published the literary magazine The Museum (with poet and physician Mark Akenside (1721-1770) at its first editor) , and others.

Dodsley is buried at Durham, where he died on a visit to a friend.

Life with James Boswell:

Boswell met a Mr. Dodsley (a good, jolly, decent, conversable man ) at Thomas Davies home (or bookstore) on Christmas day, 1762. The Dodleys had published Boswells poem The Cub at Newmarket earlier the same year. From the diary one gets the impression that Boswell hadn't met this Mr. Dodsley before, which suggests that he is referring to Robert Dodsley who retired from the publishing business in 1759, and so wouldn't have met Boswell in the shop.

External links:

• Painting of Robert Dodsley - the National Portrait Gallery
• Robert Dodsley - great biography at The Free Dictionary
• Annual Register - scanned images of the first 21 volumes (1758-78)
• Wikipedia: Robert Dodsley

Literature:

On the Abebooks used books search engine you can usually find copies of Harry M. Solomon's 1996 biography of Dodsley, The Rise of Robert Dodsley: Creating the New Age of Print. The biography is also available at Questia, The Internet's Largest Library. Some of Dodsley's own writings and short early biographies about him are also available through Abebooks .

This article was last updated at February 16 2008 20:54:49 CET

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