Robert Dodsley

Life
1703-1764; began as footman to Mrs. Lowther and ended as belle-lettrist printer; poems appeared in Muse in Livery (1732); briefly worked as prompter in the Royal Theatre, Dublin in c.1742; issued A Select Collection of Old Plays (1744), in which were printed Ram Alley by David Barry, inter al.; ed. A Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748-58), first published in three volumes in a shoddily produced edition, to be followed by a fourth vol. in 1755 and completed in 1758 with fifth and sixth vols., all appearing in a superior printing, and then reprinted in 1763 - by which time some 24,000 copies of this leading anthology of polite literature in the Augustan style had been sold; six more editions appeared up to 1782, issued by his brother and successor at Tully’s Head; it was remembered by Byron as ‘the last decent thing of its kind’ when Murray projected an anthology in 1814;

Dodsley launched the Annual Register with the assistance of Edmund Burke in 1758, and is credited with suggesting the compilation of an English Dictionary to Dr. Johnson (who called him “Doddy”); he wrote plays incl. The Miller of Mansfield (1748-49), a comedy, and Cleone (1758), a tragedy - condemned as ‘cruel, bloody and unnatural’ by Garrick; he was also the putative author of The Economy of Human Life (1803, and earlier edns) but actually by Lord Chesterfield (Stanhope), sometime Irish Viceroy; it contains the famous sentence, - which contains the famous remark about Elizabeth I 'that her ministers were just, her counsellors were sage, her captains were bold, and her maids of honour ate beefstakes to breakfast"; a literary dining-club at Yale was known as ‘Dodsley’s Collection’; his namesake son, with whom he is often confused, published works by Pope, Johnson, Edward Young, Goldsmith, Gray, Mark Akenside, and Shenstone. ODNB OCEL

[ Note: There is an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography - available online; accessed 11.07.2023 ]

[ top ]

Works
Individual works, Preaching, imit. Horace [1735, 1746]; Beauty or the Art of Charming, poem (1735); Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, one act ballad farce (1741); Book of J[ames] A[nnesley], calling himself 6th Earl of Angelesey (1743); The Cave of Pope: A Prophecy, Verses on the Grotto at Twickenham (1743); Chronicles of the Kings of England (1799, edns. to 1814); Cleone, a five act trag. in verse, with Melopmene: An Ode (1758, 1759); A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, ed. R.D. (1748, edns. to 1782), notes by Horace Walpole; Public Virtue, a poem (1753); The Preceptor, a general course of education, pref. Dr. Johnson (1748); A Muse in Livery, sketch of ... poverty (1732); The Miller, adapted in Scots Gallic by W. M. Murra[r]y (1850).

Collected Works, King [and] The Miller of Mansfield (1701), one act play; “Toy Shop” [one act farce], in Bell’s British Theatre, Vol. 3 (1784); “Poetical Works and Life”, in R. Anderson, M.D., ed., Complete Edition of Poets of Great Britain, Vol. XI (1793); Poetical Works, in Pocket Edition of Select British Poets [1797]; Melopmene or the Regions of Terror and Pity, with Pain and Patience, Colin’s Kiss, and Other Poems, in Cabinet of Poetry, Vol. 5 (1808); Life and Poems, in Chalmers’s Works of the English Poets, Vol. 5 (1810). Also, Miscellanies, 2 vols. (1745).

Reprints, Dodsley’s Select Collection of Old English Plays (facs. rep. 1964); Michael Suarez, SJ, ed. Dodsley, A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, 6 vols. [rep. of 1782 edn.] (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press 1998), 2,477pp. See review by James Tierney, TLS, 9 Oct. 1998, pp.27-28.

Bibliographical details
The Economy of Human Life
(1803, & earlier edns.), was attrib. to Dodsley him but in fact by Lord Chesterfield (Stanhope). There was a French trans 1839; an Italian (1797), and a Latin version also [orig.?] (1752). The whole was rendered by S. Watts in heroic verse as Chinese Maxims from Economy &c.; also trans. into Irish [as] Sduirach na Beatha Shaoghalta [Pt. 1 only] le R. Dodsley [recte Stanhope]. See also Air eadar-theangachadh o an bheurla gu Gaelic Allbannach le Alastair MacLauruinn [The Direction of Mortal Life, being a translation from English into Scots Gaelic], p. xii, 131 (T. Stiwart, Dunn Eidinn, 1806).


[ top ]

Criticism
Ralph Straus, Robert Dodsley, Poet, Publisher and Playwright ([1910]; NY: Burt Franklin 1968), 407pp., 13 pls., and bibl. of Dodsley’s works (72pp.); R. C. Simmons, The Rise of Robert Dodsley: Creating the New Age of Print (Carbondale: S. Illinois UP 1996); see also Analytical bibliography by R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933). Note, J. Tierney, The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley, 1764-1773 (Cambridge: University Press 1988) [viz., Dodsley the Younger]. See also Langhans, ed., Irish Promptbooks

James Tierney, review of Dodsley, A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, 6 vols. [rep. of 1782 edn.] (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press 1998), 2,477pp. [0415 14382 9], in Times Literary Supplement, 9 Oct. 1998, pp.27-28.

[ top ]

References
Charles A. Read, The Cabinet of Irish Literature [1876-78], remarks that Eliz. Ryves took on the ‘historical and political departments ... when Dodsley gave up the management of the Annual Register.’

A. N. Jeffares, Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1982), notes that Edmund Burke edited the Annual Register for Dodsley from 1779 onwards (p.68).

Booksellers: Eric Stevens (Cat. 1992) lists The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley, 1733-1764, ed. James E Tierney (Cambridge UP 1988), 599p. [£55].

[ top ]