SOURCE: Tierney, James E. Introduction to The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley 1733-1764, pp. 3-64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

LIFE, WRITINGS AND ASSOCIATES

Writing to Thomas Percy in 1761, William Shenstone took obvious delight in recounting an anecdote arising from Lady Gough's recent visit. Apparently the Lady had taken the liberty of peeking into a letter from Dodsley that lay open on the table. Confusing the bookseller with the deistical pamphleteer Henry Dodwell (d. 1784), she soon thereafter sent Shenstone the advice that he should “break off all correspondence with that Dodwell; for that she had heard he was an infidel.” Since then, Shenstone hastens to tell Percy, she has “accused our Friend Dodsley of no Less than Blasphemy; by reason that he in his verses makes so free with silvan Gods & rural deities.”¹

One smiles at the Lady's ingenuousness, but not with complete confidence, for even those familiar with eighteenth-century London society have difficulty distinguishing among those notables whose surnames approximated Dodsley's. Lurking in the shadows of the century's annals are several who occasionally make a show on the stage to complete the historian's cast of characters. The clergyman and author William Dodd (1729-77), for instance, by forging a four thousand pound bond in the name of the 5th Earl of Chesterfield, earned considerable notice on the way to a public execution in 1777. Two other controversial clerical authors swell the chorus of notable “Dods”: the active dissenting lecturer and hymn-writer from Northampton, Philip Doddridge (1702-51), and the forementioned Henry Dodwell's more traditional brother, William Dodwell (1709-85), Archdeacon of Berkshire. Perhaps the best known of the “Dods” at the time was George Bubb Doddington, Baron Melcombe, a popular wit, political pamphleteer, and patron of literature. But more obviously blurring the picture within Dodsley's own trade were Anne and Benjamin Dodd. Not only did the careers of these two London booksellers overlap Dodsley's, but their names were occasionally joined with his in imprints.

It is not entirely surprising, then, that even modern scholars occasionally blunder when referring to Dodsley, especially confusing him with his younger brother and successor, James Dodsley. A. S. Collins, in his standard Authorship in the Days of Johnson (1928), claims that “where Dodsley gave 220 guineas for Young's Night Thoughts in 1742, he gave Percy in 1765 300 Guineas for his Reliques.”² R. W. Chapman prints among Samuel Johnson's Letters (1952) one piece to Dodsley whose date he estimates to be sometime in September or October 1765.³ Neither Collins nor Chapman seems to realize that he is confounding the two brothers: Robert had died in 1764. The same error abounds in library catalogues, sometimes marring even those of our most sophisticated research libraries.

Robert Dodsley, bookseller, poet, and playwright, was born the eldest son of a Mansfield schoolmaster on 13 February 1703. He was descended from an old Midland family whose origins can be traced to the thirteenth century.⁴ Of his four brothers and two sisters, only the youngest, James, would approach Robert's stature in eighteenth-century society. Joining Robert as a partner, he later succeeded to the business, which he carried on until 1797. John, who took up the family tradition as a farmer and maltster, remained in the Mansfield area, as it seems did Lucy.⁵ Isaac travelled to Bath to become Ralph Allen's gardener, and Alvory to London where, Straus suggests, he might have run a Westminster pamphlet shop.⁶ Alice, having married Francis Dyer and moved to London, tended the ailing Robert during his retirement at her home in Bruton Street.

Like the early history of many notables, Dodsley's is difficult to chart; he seems not to have saved much (if there was anything to save) from the period of his migration from Mansfield to London. From various sources, we know that he had been apprenticed to a Mansfield stocking weaver, but doubtless the education Robert, Sr., had expended on his first-born chafed under the restrictions of the menial trade, and he soon departed the city—under what conditions it is not known.

The road to London was not direct, nor without distress. His anxieties were exacerbated by an ambition and an awareness much beyond his humble origins. He records in an early essay, Miseries of Poverty: “The miseries of a thinking man are intolerably aggravated by the quick sense he has of them … every uncomfortable circumstance depresses his spirits; the contempt with which the world looks upon him in a mean and despicable habit, the rude illiterate company he is forced to associate with, and the many insults, inconveniences, and restraints which he undergoes … are themes which afford him a great many melancholy reflections.” These frustrated psychological energies initially drove him to seek relief as a footman, first at the house of the epicure and humorist Charles Dartiquenave, then probably for Sir Richard Howe of Gloucester and Notts., and finally at the Whitehall residence of the Hon. Jane Lowther, where he seems to have remained at least until 1732. Here, no doubt, he met many titled persons and literary celebrities of the Lady's acquaintance; and here he had access to a library. Most importantly for his career, he parlayed his experience in these services, with the assistance of the Muse, into verses that captured the fancy of some influential visitors. (He was obviously aware that the Wiltshire farmer, Stephen Duck, was currently being lionized in London as the “Thresher Poet.”)

By some unknown means, the young footman gained access to Daniel Defoe. Defoe read, revised, and added some front and back material to Dodsley's poem Servitude (1729), and then saw to this first publication of the footman's works. His acceptance among influential circles by 1732 is confirmed by the appearance of his A Muse in Livery, or the Footman's Miscellany. This anonymous collection of one hundred and fifty pages of verse was prefaced by a subscription list of over two hundred names, many of them from among the peerage. Within a few months, a second edition appeared, this time printed as “By R. Dodsley, now a Footman to a Person of Quality at Whitehall.” It is difficult to imagine that his bookseller's shop at the sign of Tully's Head was less than three years away. But now he was ready to meet the revered Alexander Pope, and here begins the present collection of letters.

Pope's pleasure with Dodsley's little satiric play, The Toy-shop, is recorded in a letter of 5 February 1733, where Pope promises to recommend it to John Rich, the manager of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Two years would intervene before the production, during which Dodsley turned out three poems after the manner of his benefactor: Epistle to Mr. Pope, Occasion'd by his Essay on Man (1734), The Modern Reasoners (1734), and Beauty, or the Art of Charming (1735). Again, his patron was obviously pleased, for all were issued by Pope's current publisher, Lawton Gilliver.

On 3 February 1735, Rich produced The Toy-shop at his new theater in Covent Garden. It scored an immediate success both on and off the stage. Eleven editions were called for within the first two years, and it passed through a number of translations. Despite its lack of plot, its gentle satire of contemporary extravagances so pleased audiences that it enjoyed a considerable run as an afterpiece and was frequently revived at both major theatres over the next two decades. Most importantly, however, it provided Dodsley with the financial resources (together with a hundred pound contribution from Pope) to open his bookseller's shop within months of the play's debut.

As might be expected, Pope's patronage was crucial to the new business from the outset. Switching some of his trade from Gilliver to Dodsley, Pope would publish at least seven works from Tully's Head by 1739, including his Letters and the second volume of his Works, though in the former “RD” was joined by Knapton, Gilliver, and Brindley.⁷ Likewise, the appearance of Pope's works from Dodsley's shop doubtless brought the new bookseller's name to the attention of other authors, as well as inevitably inserting him into the mainstream of the trade. In 1737, he published Richard Glover's Leonidas, a poem of epic proportions that, to some critics, rivaled Milton's Paradise Lost. More significantly at this time, it was to Dodsley that the then little-known Samuel Johnson brought his poem London (1738), which became a milestone in the careers of both author and publisher.

One misfortune during these years, Dodsley would not forget in the future management of his business. His publishing of Paul Whitehead's satiric poem Manners in early February 1739, enraged certain members of the House of Lords, particularly Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury, who caused the bookseller to be summoned before that body. When the poem was judged a scurrilous reflection on certain members, Dodsley was committed to prison in Butcher Row. There he stayed for a week until his friend and neighbor Benjamin Victor used his influence with one of the offended parties, Lord Essex, to secure his release on 20 February.⁸ By absconding, Whitehead had escaped prosecution.

The ease and success of Dodsley's transition from footman poet to London businessman, quite extraordinary in itself, says something about his versatile talents. But, amidst it all, he did not forget his first love, writing. The Toy-shop was followed by The King and Miller of Mansfield, a melodrama first acted at Drury Lane on 29 January 1737. With Colley Cibber playing the King, the play captured the fancy of London audiences, ran for many nights (including a command performance at the order of the Prince of Wales), and was acted every season thereafter until 1775. Although its sequel, Sir John Cockle at Court (1738), lasted but two performances, the young playwright must have been elated to realize that his first three plays (The Toy-shop being revived) were being acted on London stages within a single month, during February and March 1738. Still a fourth play, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, with Kitty Clive in the lead, was performed at Drury Lane in 1741, but this sentimental afterpiece proved equally ineffective.⁹

Other works continued to flow from his pen through the early 1740s, including Rex et Pontifex (1745), a “new Species of pantomime,” for which Dodsley failed to find a producer. Most likely a realization of his waning ability to entertain the town prompted him, by the middle of the decade, to turn his attention to the publication of other men's plays.

His love of the theater, together with an ever-present patriotism, at some point had set him to collecting old English plays. The first fruit of this new endeavor appeared in 1745 as A Select Collection of Old Plays (10 vols.), followed by two more volumes in 1746 (though all were dated 1744). Dodsley's purpose in gathering these sixty-one plays, ranging back to the year 1547, is expressed in the preface to the volumes: “My first End was to snatch some of the best pieces of our old Dramatic Writers from total Neglect and Oblivion.”¹⁰ And, for some, Dodsley is best remembered for this service. Apparently he had collected well over six hundred plays in these days, many of which would pass into the famed collection that David Garrick formed over the next three decades.¹¹

Dodsley's bookselling business hit full stride by the mid-1740s. Through the first half of the decade, he had been issuing, either by himself or in collaboration, well over a dozen titles a year, a figure that reached nineteen in 1744 and twenty-nine in 1745. In an age when authors were at the mercy of crass, “dealing” booksellers, Dodsley had leavened his negotiations with a literary sensitivity, apparently fulfilling Pope's prediction: “Dodsley … as he has more Sense, so will have more Honesty, than most of that Profession.”¹² Besides issuing some of Pope's works, he had inserted himself in the ongoing Bathurst edition of Swift through a purchase of original Swift manuscripts from Thomas Sheridan, the younger. To these, he joined a number of first works from the decade's rising stars: William Shenstone's The Judgment of Hercules (1741), William Whitehead's The Danger of Writing Verse (1741), John Brown's Honour (1743), Mark Akenside's The Pleasures of Imagination (1744), Joseph Warton's The Enthusiast (1744), Thomas Warton's Five Pastoral Eclogues (1745), Thomas Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1747), and William Mason's Musaeus (1747). At the same time, a number of established authors turned to Dodsley's services, including John Dalton, DD, Stephen Duck, George, Lord Lyttelton, Joseph Spence, Gilbert West, and, probably the best remembered, Edward Young, who would issue the first six of his Night Thoughts from Tully's Head. This predominantly literary cast reflects Dodsley's own interests, as well as illustrating that, in the first decade of business, Dodsley's shop had become synonymous with belles lettres.

Surrounded with such figures, and no doubt inundated with the petitions of so many more, it is not surprising that Dodsley should conceive of a project with which his name has been linked ever since. With something of the foresight that gave birth to the Select Collection of Old Plays, Dodsley decided “to preserve to the public those poetical performances, which seemed to merit a longer remembrance than what would probably be secured to them by the Manner wherein they were originally published.” So read the Advertisement to A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, whose first three volumes appeared on 14 January 1748. There Dodsley re-printed many of his earlier successes but also included a number of original pieces, as well as many older favorites. Together with the three concluding volumes issued in the 1750s, the Collection has sometimes been regarded as an index to mid-eighteenth century taste.¹³ And to some degree, this is true. Of course, some notables are missing—Swift and Young, for instance—but such were probably excluded either because their works were readily available in numerous editions or because copyright ownership prevented their inclusion. Indeed the volumes contain a good deal of trivial material (probably imposed upon the bookseller by friends and acquaintances). On the other hand, it is difficult to find half a dozen notable, practising poets who are not represented.

In the same year that he published the Collection, the enterprising Dodsley launched another work of broad significance, in terms of public utility. As one who struggled to gain a rudimentary education, Dodsley never forgot the needs of schoolboys, especially the less privileged who were forced to earn their education at home. Accordingly, on 7 April 1748, he issued the two-volume Preceptor: Containing a General Course of Education. The introduction was written by Samuel Johnson, whose other contribution to the work, “The Vision of Theodore, the Hermit of Teneriffe,” Johnson later thought was entitled to the “Palm over all he ever wrote.”¹⁴ Boswell himself regarded the Preceptor as “one of the most valuable books for the improvement of young minds that has appeared in any language.”¹⁵ The volumes covered a broad range of topics, offering lessons on mathematics, architecture, geography (125 pages), rhetoric, drawing, logic (195 pages), ethics (140 pages), trade and commerce (82 pages), law and government, to mention only a handful. The products of several authors, the pieces were selected and edited by Dodsley, who even secured a special license from George II to protect his copyright. The whole work was conducted in an atmosphere of deism, pragmatism, and common sense. Something particularly “Dodsley” surfaces in the estimate of trade and commerce: “the only effectual means of banishing idleness, indigence, and ill humours.” The work passed through at least four editions during the bookseller's lifetime, spawned a number of imitators, and was used even by young scholars at Rutgers University during the century.¹⁶

Besides Pope, undoubtedly the most popular authors that Dodsley saw through the press in the 1740s—in terms of numbers of works and editions—were Mark Akenside and Edward Young. Three editions of Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination (1744) were called for in the first year, the same year the author published An Epistle to Curio. Two editions of Odes on Several Subjects were printed in 1745, as were two editions of An Ode to the Right Honourable the Earl of Huntingdon in 1748. Akenside served his bookseller in another capacity during 1746-7, when he took on the compiling and editing of Dodsley's fortnightly Museum: or, Literary and Historical Register, to be considered below.

But among Dodsley's poets in this decade, no one matched Edward Young for productivity and popularity. Within three years, Dodsley had paid Young more than 230 pounds (see Appendix B) for the copyright to the first six “Nights” of the poet's The Complaint; or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality. The “Nights” were issued individually but on no regular schedule from 1742 to 1743. “Night the First” passed through two editions in the first two months, followed by the next three “Nights,” all of which were then published under one cover through two editions. The next two “Nights” followed in order, and then appeared a collected edition of all six, which, by 1749, had enjoyed eight editions. It is not clear why Dodsley refused to purchase “Nights” VII-IX when offered by Young in a letter of October 1747 (q.v.). Perhaps the bookseller thought he had expended enough on the work or that the public had begun to have enough of Young's weighty Complaint. Whatever the reason for it, the refusal did not dampen their relationship. In 1751, Dodsley joined with Andrew Millar, who had bought the remaining “Nights,” to issue a complete edition of all nine “Nights,” a work they continued to issue through the 1750s. Finally, in 1753, Dodsley would be publishing Young's tragedy The Brothers, and, two years later, his Centaur Not Fabulous.

In 1741, Dodsley struck out in a new direction. He attempted to capitalize on the phenomenal growth in the periodical market, particularly on the popularity of the relatively new form, the magazine. Since Edward Cave had begun the Gentleman's Magazine ten years earlier, his imitators had proliferated. The more elaborate monthly had already taken its toll on such specialized periodicals as essay sheets, journals, and reviews, leaving itself and the newspaper as the most prosperous undertakings in the field. Apparently Dodsley attempted to beat Cave at his own game by publishing a weekly three-penny pamphlet that combined high-quality essays with fresher news than Cave was able to offer in his monthly. The Public Register: or the Weekly Magazine got off to an encouraging start on 3 January 1741, but apparently by the fourteenth number it had begun to make inroads on the territory closely guarded by Cave and his chief rivals. When it was reported to the authorities that the Register carried news, Dodsley was forced to pay the stamp tax or discontinue the news. He chose the latter, and the circulation began to drop. Three numbers later, he paid the tax, restored the news, but cut the size of the magazine. However, even then, the forces working against him proved too strong, and he concluded the periodical with the twenty-fourth number, adding the complaint: “the additional expense I was obliged to in stamping it, and the ungenerous usage I have met with from one of the proprietors of a certain monthly pamphlet, who has prevail'd with most of the common newspapers not to advertise it, compel me for the present to discontinue it.”¹⁷

Five years later, however, having firmly secured himself in the trade and now with Tully's Head bustling with fashionable literary talent, Dodsley made another run at the periodical market. On 20 January 1746, he signed an agreement with Mark Akenside to conduct the fortnightly Museum: or, Literary and Historical Register, whose first issue appeared on the following 29 March. The periodical's regular forty pages were divided into four well-defined sections: essays, poetry, literary memoirs, and historical memoirs. Besides the work of Akenside, through the course of its thirty-nine numbers, the Museum included contributions from such as William Collins, the late Lord Hervey, Soame Jenyns, Samuel Johnson, Robert Lowth, George, Lord Lyttelton, Joseph Spence, Horace Walpole, Joseph and Thomas Warton, and the future poet laureate William Whitehead. Although its predominantly literary character hardly posed a marketing threat to the more general pitch of the Gentleman's, once again Cave smugly congratulated himself when the Museum was discontinued in September 1747. The Preface to the collected edition of the Gentleman's for that year delighted in the fact that this “super-excellent Magazine [Museum], which was entirely to extirpate all others … a work of genius and learning” had expired. Accompanying verses roundly chastised the pretentions of the Museum's projectors. Why Dodsley discontinued the Museum at this time is not known. Perhaps it had been designed for only a stated number of issues, as would be his next periodical, The World. But it is true that, by 1747, Dodsley had already engaged himself in another large, time-consuming project, his three-volume Collection of Poems by Several Hands, which would appear the following March.¹⁸

A major addition at Tully's Head during the 1740s should be mentioned before leaving the decade. One piece of evidence suggests that, sometime before 3 June 1742, Dodsley's brother James had come to work for him. On that day James witnessed an agreement Dodsley signed with Henry Baker for the purchase of The Microscope Made Easy. Unfortunately this single document is all that we have to link the younger Dodsley with Tully's Head during the 1740s, for his name does not appear with Robert's in an imprint until 1753. But since he was admitted as a member of the Stationers' Company in 1754 (albeit by redemption), it is likely that he served some time with Robert during the previous decade. The extremely low profile James kept at Tully's Head—even after 1754—is perplexing, however. Although numerous letters he exchanged with authors after Robert's death are extant, only one brief piece predating 1764 has turned up.¹⁹ Likewise, despite James's intimate involvement with the business during the 1750s, Robert does not mention his brother in the letters printed here until 20 July 1757, when writing to Nicholas Herbert; that is, less than two years before he surrendered the business to James. But no evidence survives to explain this curious omission.

Dodsley opened the 1750s with a work of his own pen that proved immensely popular. The Oeconomy of Human Life. Translated from an Indian Manuscript, written by an Ancient Bramin earned some of its success because it was commonly thought to have been the work of Lord Chesterfield, an opinion that endured as late as Tedder's entry on Dodsley in the Dictionary of National Biography.²⁰ Some of this confusion arose because the book was published anonymously from the shop of Mary Cooper (who, curiously, issued a sequel not by Dodsley) and because the volume was purportedly written as a “Letter from an English Gentleman, now residing in China, to the Earl of****.” Essentially, the book consisted of more than a hundred pages of moral aphorisms, conveyed in something of a biblical air but with an ease and neutrality that made it accessible and agreeable to all. The Oeconomy passed through at least ten editions during Dodsley's lifetime and was translated into French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish within the first five years of its publication. It was truly, as Straus calls it, a “minor literary success of the century” (p. 180).

Another of Dodsley's own compositions, issued in 1753, did not enjoy the same reception; in fact, it turned out to be quite a disappointment to him. Agriculture had been planned as the first book of a three-part work to be entitled Public Virtue. But the eighty-eight pages of tedious blank verse, despite its concern with the increasingly popular subject of landscape gardening, did not sell, and Dodsley abandoned the entire project.

Towards the end of 1754, the bookseller became involved with a work, which, because of its delicate nature, found him vacillating on the decision to put the Tully's Head imprint to it. From the very start, he had been anxious about Joseph Warton's treatment of Pope in Warton's proposed Essay on the Writings and Genius of Mr. Pope. In the forefront of the new trend in poetry, Warton had some negative things to say about Dodsley's old benefactor. But besides worrying about the inevitable charge of ingratitude, Dodsley had been fidgeting lest the door be closed on a lucrative business opportunity. William Warburton, Pope's executor, had inherited the poet's manuscripts and had issued the “authoritive” edition of Pope's Works in 1751. For some time, Dodsley had hoped to buy into the edition, but as late as 1754 Warburton had refused him. While still continuing to hope, he knew that Warton's Essay would not assist his case with Warburton. The full story is told in the Dodsley-Warburton exchange in late December 1755, and consequently it is not rehearsed here. It will be adequate to say that, despite the apparent finality of that exchange, Dodsley engaged Mary Cooper to put her name to the Essay when it appeared in March of 1756. Only the “Second Edition, corrected” (1762) carried the names “R. and J. Dodsley.”²¹

In his letter to Warton on 18 January 1755, Dodsley revealed another distraction he had endured over the past month, an event that hurt him deeply. His wife of twenty-three years, Catherine Iserloo, had died on 12 December. Little is known of “Kitty,” except the passing references to her in Dodsley's correspondence, more frequent during her last years when she was seeking relief at Bath. She had certainly claimed a major place in Dodsley's early verses, however, inspiring the young footman's muse on many an occasion. His Wish offers but one example:

A wife, young, virtuous, fair and kind,
          If such a one there be;
Yes, one there is 'mongst Womankind
          O Kitty! thou art she.
With her, ye gods, with her but make me blest,
Of all your blessings—that would be the best.

Shortly after, another “lady” of Dodsley's acquaintance would cause him additional sorrow, although she would ultimately prove a source of great joy and triumph. Sometime in the mid-1750s, he had been at work on a tragedy, whose subject, Cleone, he had borrowed from the legend of St Genevieve. Rounded into shape by 1756, Cleone was submitted to Garrick for Drury Lane, but the theater manager refused it. Again and again, Dodsley revised the play with the help and encouragement of his friends, but Garrick would not have it. Finally, with the patronage of Lord Chesterfield, Dodsley ventured the play at John Rich's then unfashionable Covent Garden theater. Dodsley's friends, including Samuel Johnson, rallied round him, and soon the Town was split into factions over the anticipated performance. Garrick had privately condemned the play to Dodsley's leading actress, George Anne Bellamy, and, to insure his judgment, had scheduled Susanna Centlivre's Busy Body (with himself playing the lead for the first time) to run against Cleone's opening night. Tension mounted when the performance of Cleone was delayed for a few nights, and Garrick likewise delayed his production of The Busy Body. Finally both opened on 2 December 1758, and the rivalry spawned a host of partisan newspaper accounts. The story of Dodsley's enormous success and Garrick's chagrin is reflected in Dodsley's letters to Shenstone immediately following the play's debut and in his bitter exchange with Garrick at the same time, a feud from which the two former friends never seemed to recover.

Some defense of Garrick is in order, however. Although Cleone enjoyed a long run, was graced with the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, passed through two editions and four thousand copies within two weeks, and generally turned the tide of fashion at Covent Garden, the tragedy has perhaps appropriately not outlived its time. The echoes of Shakespeare are too evident, some of its happenings extremely improbable, and the sentimental tug irksome. In his letter to Shenstone on 20 January, Dodsley reports that both men and women wept aloud at Cleone's woes. And Samuel Johnson says the same of its author: “Doddy … went every night to the stage-side, and cryed at the distress of poor Cleone.”²² But although faithful to his patron, Johnson had serious reservations about the tragedy, as Boswell later records. When Bennet Langton had finished reading aloud a particular act to him, Johnson urged: “Come let's have some more, let's go into the slaughter-house again, Lanky. But I am afraid there is more blood than brains.”²³

On the other hand, whatever might be said of Cleone, few plays have been written with a more studied attempt to achieve a particular effect. Dodsley's tireless revising in the face of Garrick's repeated rejections might suggest the wearisome author who has written his “masterpiece” and will not let the world rest until his prodigy is recognized. And thus it may be. But there is more to it than that, as is revealed in a little-known commonplace book of Dodsley's now in the Bancroft Library.²⁴ This loosely constructed essay on tragedy, running fifty folios and studded with quotations from seventeenth and eighteenth-century critics, demonstrates how extensively the playwright had read and reflected on the subject when preparing Cleone. The culmination of his effort is expressed in a letter to James Cawthorne twenty months before Cleone was produced. Writing in response to Cawthorne's criticism of the play (now missing), Dodsley offers his own perceptions on the proper nature of domestic tragedy, the form he was championing. There, among other things, he says he has been “so great an enemy to that tumidity of style so often made use of in tragedy.” He claims “a domestic distress like this, should be as far remov'd from all pomp of expression as elegance will permit.” Similarly his versification has purposely avoided “a smooth & flowing harmony of numbers (which I have always look'd upon in Rowe as a fault),” and instead has striven for “a natural ease and simplicity of language, as might flow … from the lips of the Speaker.” And indeed that is how the play reads; one might even call it forward-looking, for its simplicity of expression is well wedded to the domestic scene. Regrettably, however, Dodsley could not resist the melodrama that his age demanded.

The same preoccupation with dramatic theory was no doubt responsible for Dodsley's Melpomene: or The Regions of Terror and Pity, a 25-stanza ode he published in September 1757 while still pining over the unproduced Cleone. Issued anonymously from Mary Cooper's shop, the ode was well received, even the chary Thomas Gray confessing a liking for it.²⁵ Sometime in November, responding to Robert Lowth's kind words, Dodsley explained his motivation: “To confess the truth, I have long been an admirer of the fair Melpomene [muse of tragedy], of late had made my addresses to her with some assiduity, and … I thought my self in a fair way of gaining her good graces. But the King of her Country [Garrick], being inform'd by the said Cleone of my design on his favorite Melpomene forbad my entrance into his Dominions on pain of Damnation, deem'd my humble spirit audacious and presuming, and dismiss'd poor Cleone from his presence with visible marks of unkindness and disgrace. Piqued at this repulse, I publish'd my Ode on Terror and Pity, to show y^e World my pretensions, and to let the Tyrant see, tho' he scorn'd my offers, that the Lady had not disdain'd to admit me into some of her secret Misteries.” So were Dodsley's spirits born up for the ensuing year until the opening of Cleone.

But Dodsley's reputation and influence had been expanding by still another work that was going forward at the same time as was Cleone. The reception of his Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748; three editions by 1752), together with his ever increasing stores of poetry, prompted him to consider a fourth volume sometime in 1753. Although initially planned for the winter of 1754, its progress suffered several delays, not the least cause being the death of his wife in December 1754. Finally it appeared on 18 March 1755, together with a fourth edition of the first three volumes.

As the author of Tristram Shandy would at one point happily complain—“the more I write, the more I shall have to write”²⁶—so Dodsley, the more he published, the more he was obliged to publish. Within little more than a year after the appearance of the fourth volume of the Collection, he wrote to Shenstone that he now intended to add two more volumes to the work.²⁷ But again numerous delays, especially caused by the ailing Shenstone in the closing months, held up the publication for almost two full years. When they appeared on 18 March 1758, twenty-nine of Shenstone's poems opened Volume V, and ten of Akenside's did the same for Volume VI. Slightly represented are a dozen names that have survived the age, such as Fielding, Gray, Hawkesworth, Percy, Pope, and Thomas Warton, but for the most part Dodsley did indeed preserve for many poetical performances “a longer remembrance than would probably be secured to them [otherwise].” None the less, the volumes passed through six more editions in the century and prompted other editors to issue supplements in various forms.²⁸

For eighteenth-century booktradesmen, the profits and reputation to be earned from the publication of a successful periodical proved irresistibly fascinating; and Dodsley was no exception. Not quite five and a half years after the Museum had been concluded, he contracted with Edward Moore for the conduct of a weekly essay journal to be called The World.²⁹ The periodical was designed and carried on as a lively, light-hearted satire on contemporary customs and foibles, somewhat in the mode of the Spectator papers. But, because its authors were various, it enjoyed little of its predecessor's consistency of style. The first issue of the World, on 4 January 1753, scored an immediate success. Shortly after its inception, Dodsley was printing 2,500 copies of each Thursday number of the periodical, which ran for 209 numbers through 30 December 1756.

Moore, carrying on the work under the pseudonym “Adam FitzAdam,” had the advantage of Dodsley's corps of fashionable authors to support his weekly effort. Among those who took a turn at filling The World's columns were Lords Bath, Chesterfield, and Hailes, John, Earl of Cork, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, Richard Owen Cambridge (twenty-one numbers), Soame Jenyns, Joseph Warton, William Whitehead, and Horace Walpole. It was in The World (Nos. 100 and 101) that Chesterfield, a rather frequent contributor (twenty-four numbers), printed the praises of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary that provoked the irate lexicographer's famous letter to his would-be patron.

A little over a year after The World had concluded, Dodsley was back in the periodical market, but this time with a more substantial and enduring project. In April 1758, he and his brother James signed an agreement with another rising star, Edmund Burke, to write and compile the Annual Register. The first number appeared thirteen months later as a 400-page volume. A comprehensive work, the Annual Register chronicled the major events of the previous year, offered literary, historical, and topographical essays, carried numerous poems, and reviewed what Burke regarded as the best books published during that period. Once more, Dodsley had designed another triumph. The first number alone was reprinted nine times by the end of the century, and its successors enjoyed similar reprintings. Although Burke's political fortunes allowed him to drop out of the project sometime in the mid-1760s, James Dodsley continued to publish the work, under the direction of other compilers, until his death in 1797.³⁰ Another evidence of Dodsley's commercial genius in filling a public need, the Annual Register ran well into the present century.

Dodsley also became involved in the publication of three newspapers during his career, although, in the case of two of them, he merely functioned as shareholder. As early as 5 May 1747, he had purchased a one-fifteenth share in the thrice-weekly London Evening Post, at the time the most influential London paper in the provinces.³¹ By his own testimony, however, it is clear that he had nothing to do with its actual publication, despite the fact that he had regularly used the paper for placing poems as well as for advertising his books.³²

It is probably no coincidence that after competing with Cave's Gentleman's Magazine on two occasions, Dodsley should purchase a major share in the Gentleman's chief rival, the London Magazine. On 9 December 1748, he bought a quarter share for 350 pounds, probably his largest purchase up to that date. Again, he seems to have had little say in the magazine's production, except perhaps to insert an occasional poem.³³

The London Chronicle, however, found him at the headwaters. He undertook this thrice-weekly evening newspaper with William Strahan, who served as the paper's printer. With an introduction by Samuel Johnson, the first number was issued on New Year's Day 1757, and was well received. When printing his Life of Johnson (1791), James Boswell noted that the paper “still subsists” and that when he had been abroad, he found it to have “a more extensive circulation upon the Continent than any of the English newspapers.”³⁴ It is sometimes thought that Dodsley sold his share of the paper shortly after the eleventh number because Strahan had continued, against his protest, to admit scurrilous material to the paper, principally articles reprinted from The Test and The Con-Test.³⁵ Although Dodsley wrote to Strahan on 24 January, expressing this determination, he seems not to have carried out his threat. The evidence occurs in another letter to Strahan, almost two years later, where the successful playwright is urging that the attacks on Garrick for his conduct toward Cleone be discontinued in “our paper.”³⁶

The last major project in Dodsley's career involved the compilation, writing, and editing of 159 fables that would appear on 23 February 1761 as Select Fables of Esop and Other Fabulists. In Three Books. The reception was extraordinary. The Monthly Review (March) called it “ingenious … elegant … and very useful … a classical performance.”³⁷ The Critical Review praised Dodsley as the “best prose-writer of apologues of this or any country.”³⁸ The work saw several editions during Dodsley's lifetime and continued a favorite through the rest of the century. Part of its success might be attributed to Dodsley's wise printing of two separate editions, one on fine paper printed by Baskerville and another cheaper edition for the use of schools.

The three books presented, respectively, the fables of Aesop, fables by modern authors, and those written by Dodsley and his friends. Although no complete list of authors and their contributions has been possible, some are able to be identified. Various pieces of evidence show Richard Graves, Robert Lowth, William Melmoth, Thomas Percy, Joseph Spence, even James Dodsley, to have had a hand. Shenstone translated Antoine Houdart de la Motte's Discours sur la fable³⁹ (upon which Dodsley relied for his Preface) and provided the elaborate table of contents.⁴⁰ Besides writing most of the original fables, Dodsley made a major contribution in his extended Preface, where, as the Critical Review says, he set down the “best rules for writing apologues.” Indeed the Preface borrows much topical, argumentative, and organizational support from Dodsley's predecessor, la Motte. But much is new, enough to credit the author with an originality that, at times, pushes beyond the Frenchman's penetration.⁴¹

The stature of Dodsley's business in the English booktrade during the 1750s can be measured by the number of major literary personalities who chose to associate themselves with Tully's Head. Many have already been considered, but a particular handful, for whom he served as either advisor or patron, deserves special mention.

Because no correspondence between the two survives, Dodsley's publishing relationship with François Marie Arouet de Voltaire must be pieced together from limited evidence. Also obscuring our perspective on the relationship was the London trade's custom of issuing works of Continental authors (in the orginal or in translation) without the author's permission. Although Voltaire did not personally court Dodsley's services but had commissioned his English friend, Sir Everard Fawkener, to find an appropriate publisher, it seems that once Dodsley had begun to issue Voltaire's works, he enjoyed the Frenchman's cooperation thereafter. Fawkener had sought Dodsley's advice regarding a London edition of Voltaire's Le siècle de Louis XIV in early August 1751. Although Dodsley had thought it improper to offer the author proposals, he did agree to sell the work from his shop if Voltaire would supply the copies, including a title page indicating that the work had been printed in London expressly for him, Dodsley. Such a procedure would give the impression that Dodsley held the copyright, thereby forestalling piracies and faulty editions. All of this Fawkener conveyed to Voltaire in a letter of 13 August.⁴²

Dodsley's publishing of the work in the original on 11 April 1752, followed by three more editions by June and a translation in July, would suggest that Voltaire had agreed with the arrangements. However, the evidence proves otherwise. First of all, an impersonal reference to Dodsley in Voltaire's letter to Fawkener on the following 22 August indicates that the author had no prior knowledge of these editions: “I have been informed that a London bookseller named Dodsley has printed by subscription the age of Louis XIV in two fine volumes.”⁴³ Equally significant, entries in William Bowyer's ledgers on 30 April, 15 June, and 30 June 1752, show that the first two duodecimo editions and the following quarto edition—all in the original French—had been printed in London with imprints tailored to suggest a French origin: “Londre, chez R. Dodsley. 1752.” Voltaire goes on, in that letter, to say that Dodsley should have known that a first edition is but a trial run and that he should have waited for improvements, which he now promises to send Fawkener for Dodsley in two months' time. And indeed, in 1753, appeared from Tully's Head a “new edition, revised, and considerably augmented, by the Author.” Regrettably no evidence exists to show whether or not the other three pieces by Voltaire that Dodsley published over the next seven years were issued with the author's cooperation, but then there is no reason to think that they were not.

Another eighteenth-century luminary, the future statesman Edmund Burke, began his rise to fame through his association with Dodsley. The young Irishman, deprived of a paternal allowance because he had neglected his studies at Middle Temple, turned to his pen for a living in 1756. The first of his works, A Vindication of Natural Society, Dodsley apparently decided to farm out to Mary Cooper in order to preserve its anonymity. Its true origin was evident the following year, however, when the second edition appeared under Dodsley's imprint. That same year, Dodsley issued Burke's best known work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, as well as the two-volume An Account of the European Settlements in America, though the latter is thought to be principally the work of his kinsman, William Burke. Burke's last production for Dodsley began in April 1758, when—ever in financial distress—he signed an agreement to conduct the bookseller's new periodical project, the Annual Register, for the yearly sum of one hundred pounds. But that story has already been told. Dodsley's ability to single out genius perhaps is no better illustrated than in the case of Burke. Responding to an inquiry from Shenstone, Dodsley wrote on 20 January 1759: “That Mr. Burke who writes so ingeniously, is an Irish Gentleman, bred to the Law, but having ye grace not to follow it, will soon I should think make a very great figure in the literary World.”

Still another author destined to become a major figure applied for Dodsley's services at this time. Yet an unknown curate at York Cathedral, Laurence Sterne offered Dodsley his first volume of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent. in a letter of 23 May 1759. The London bookseller had been suggested to Sterne by John Hinxman, Dodsley's former apprentice, who had recently set himself up in the trade at York. Dodsley balked at the purchase of this maverick work, preferring to have it printed at York and sent down to London for sale at his shop. Unfortunately Dodsley's side of the correspondence is missing, and so it is impossible to know the specific arrangements with Sterne. However, although the Tully's Head imprint does not appear on the initial edition of the first two volumes in 1760, apparently some agreement had been struck, for James Dodsley (now having succeeded his brother) purchased the copyright to the volumes on 8 March for 250 pounds. At the same time, Dodsley was promised the copy of the next two volumes for 380 pounds. Accordingly, the second edition of the first two volumes, as well as the first of Volumes III and IV, were issued from Tully's Head within the year. Likewise, in May 1760, James Dodsley also purchased the copyright to Sterne's The Sermons of Mr. Yorick and published the two-volume work the same month.

Of course the initial volumes of Tristram were enormously popular. In May, Sterne came to London to enjoy his fame in person and was appropriately lionized by the town. His meeting with the Dodsleys, capped by the signing of the agreement for the next two volumes of Tristram, occasioned a classic Shandean remark. Emerging from Tully's Head, Sterne announced to his friends Croft and Chomley that “he was mortgaging his brains to Dodsley.”⁴⁴ Within the year, however, Sterne had decided to claim more of the profit from future volumes by retaining the copyright and seeing to the printing himself. Accordingly, in December 1761, Volume V and the following began to be issued by two newcomers to the trade, Thomas Becket and Peter De Hondt.

Dodsley's three chief friends and supporters during the 1750s were Samuel Johnson, William Shenstone, and Joseph Spence. They were integral to both his social and business activities. Although Dodsley's payment for Johnson's London had been meager, apparently the bookseller's person, as well as his shop's flow of literary worthies, had proven very agreeable to Johnson. He was frequently to be found in company at Tully's Head and returned again and again with his manuscripts. In 1749, Dodsley issued the ill-fated Irene but, more importantly, the memorable Vanity of Human Wishes. In 1747, in collaboration with five other booksellers, Dodsley signed an agreement with Johnson for the work that would make the author famous, A Dictionary of the English Language. Finally, the month Dodsley retired, he issued, along with William Johnston and William Strahan, Johnson's novel, The Prince of Abissinia (Rasselas).⁴⁵

It is difficult to imagine that Johnson harbored any special appreciation of Dodsley's own literary productions, but he was ever faithful to the man who had given him his start. When, in 1758, Dodsley decided to pit his tragedy Cleone at Covent Garden against all of Garrick's forces at Drury Lane, Johnson was on hand: “I went the first night, and supported it as well as I might; for Doddy, you know, is my patron, and I would not desert him.”⁴⁶ Johnson had not forgotten that not only had Dodsley seen through the press his first major works, but had been the chief instigator of the work that had made Johnson famous. Writing to Charles Burney the month of the Dictionary's publication, he revealed, “It was by his [Dodsley's] recommendation that I was employed in the work.”⁴⁷ The scarcity of their extant correspondence is to be regretted but perhaps is explained by their frequent meetings. As the present letters show, Tully's Head was a regular gathering place of Johnson's friends and acquaintances, and Johnson himself used to say, as Joseph Warton recalled, “The true Noctes Atticae are revived at honest Dodsley's house.”⁴⁸

As contributor to Dodsley's undertakings during the later 1750s, probably no one played a greater role than William Shenstone (1714-63). Although Dodsley had published the poet's work as early as 1741, Shenstone's contributions to Volumes IV-VI of the Collection of Poems by Several Hands turned a publisher-author relationship into a friendship that lasted until Shenstone's death. Dodsley closed Volume IV in 1755 with seventeen of Shenstone's poems, and when it came time for Volumes V and VI, he opened the former with another twenty-four of his friend's pieces, adding six more to Volume VI. As already evident, Dodsley likewise revered the Birmingham poet's critical abilities. Not only did he submit his own writings to Shenstone for correction, but he printed many poems belonging to Shenstone's acquaintances largely upon his friend's recommendation.⁴⁹

The deepening of their relationship during the production of the last volume of the Collection can be charted by the ever-increasing tone of familiarity that marks their letters and by the parcels Dodsley was regularly shipping off to Birmingham. Various objets d'art to enhance Shenstone's estate, the Leasowes—busts of Virgil and Horace, bronzed piping fauns, even swans and pigeons—made the route by Frimen's Wagon from London. But Dodsley's special delights were his summer jaunts to the Leasowes. He would head north, sometimes with Joseph Spence but always with some manuscript in tow about which he wanted Shenstone's advice. In June 1756, he wrote that he was carting with him “an unfortunate melancholy creature” (the rejected Cleone) who needed Shenstone's loving care. The next summer, he tells his host he is bringing along his ode Melpomene (1757) for further correction. And distressed with Shenstone's delay in submitting his own poems for the Collection, he says in the same letter that he will corrupt Shenstone's housekeeper so as “to join with me in robbing your Bureau of every scrap of Poetry in it.” In 1760, when preparing his edition of Aesop's fables, he seems to have spent the entire period from July to October at Shenstone's, reading and revising the text with his friend's help. During these visits, too, he had the opportunity of meeting Shenstone's friends, several of whose poems he had published earlier in his Collection. It was no surprise, then, that Shenstone appointed Dodsley as one of his executors, or that Dodsley issued an edition of Shenstone's Works shortly after his friend's death.

Soon after Alexander Pope died in 1744, his protégé Joseph Spence (1699-1768) turned to Dodsley as bookseller and friend. Spence's most respected work during his lifetime, Polymetis, appeared from Tully's Head in 1747, and Dodsley printed eight of Spence's narrative essays in his fortnightly Museum at about the same time. These were followed by a series of works running into the 1750s, some of which were signed with the pseudonym “Sir Harry Beaumont.” Something of the relationship of the two men is revealed as early as 1748 when Dodsley, longing for the delights of Spence's rural retreat (Spence had retired to his living at Byfleet after earning fifteen hundred pounds from his Polymetis), wrote to his friend: “If I did not love you, I should certainly envy.” Occasional hints in Dodsley's correspondence also suggest that Spence was a preferred reader of manuscripts at Tully's Head: no doubt he had a hand in the selection of poems for Dodsley's Collection. One of their most evident collaborations occurred in 1754 when they introduced English readers to the blind Scots poet Thomas Blacklock. For Dodsley's edition of Blacklock's poems—encouraged by the poet's friend David Hume—Spence provided a prefatory biographical account.

But the fullness of their relationship emerges during their summer treks north, especially their last. In 1753, Spence had gained a prebend at Durham, which the pair visited on two occasions, passing through Shenstone's Leasowes on the way. Upon his return from the first visit in August of 1758, Dodsley wrote Shenstone a lengthy letter in which he described in detail the enchantment of Durham, claiming that “it is one of the most romantic places I ever saw.” In this light, one is tempted to speculate on the gout-ridden Dodsley's motivation in undertaking a second trip to Durham with Spence in 1764, a trip from which he would not return. Spence's account of Dodsley's painful walks about Finculo Abbey in those last days was conveyed in his letters to Elizabeth Cartwright, and is printed here. Worn out, Dodsley died at Durham on 23 September, aged sixty-one, and was buried in the Durham Cathedral churchyard. There Spence had the following inscribed on a large brown stone covering his grave:

If you have any respect
For uncommon industry and merit
Regard this place
In which are interred the remains
of
Mr Robert Dodsley
Who as an author raised himself
Much above what could have been expected
From one in his rank of life
And without a learned education.
Who as a man was scarce exceeded by any
In integrity of heart
And purity of manners and conversation.
He left this world for a better
September 23rd 1764
In the 61st year of his age.

In life, Dodsley exhibited the social virtues and customs, the political and religious inclinations, of many an enlightened middle-class London businessman. His thrifty but fair-dealing ways built a steady and respected name both among his authors and within the trade. The industry and imagination that bred such distinguished accomplishments were leavened with a modesty that never seemed to forget its origins. His cautious and pragmatic approach to business did not stifle an innovative spirit that gave birth to a number of novel publications. In an age still dominated by the poetry of Pope, he had the foresight and courage to sponsor a new poetic spirit, as exhibited in the works of Collins, Smart, and the Wartons.

Little evidence exists to afford a consistent sense of Dodsley's religious persuasion, but it does seem that, like many of his well-bred, fashionable friends, he found deism most compatible. Although he was christened and married in the established church, the subject of formal religion is peculiarly absent from his correspondence, even from his private letters. He listed among his friends many authors from the clerical ranks, but their profession seemed to exercise little effect on the relationship. Dodsley's most notable reference to formal religion is strikingly antagonistic to one of its fundamental rites. Writing to Solomon Mendes in November 1744, he reflects: “My wife and I are going this evening to the solemn foolery of a christening. 'Tis very wisely done, to tye us down so early to believe, what otherwise, perhaps, might never enter into our heads. I think it would be a good way of promoting the sciences, to have godfathers and godmothers at our birth, to promise and vow for this, that he shall be a poet; for that, that he shall be a mathematician: at least, there is as much sense in one as the other.”

The anti-sacramental character of the remark fits the deistic persuasion that marked many of Dodsley's current associates, as it did some of his own publications. Of course it is dangerous to rely on a bookseller's list of publications, especially such a diverse one as Dodsley's, to frame some picture of his religion. On the other hand, a few works of this period projected by Dodsley himself and over which he exercised close control clearly evidence a taste for deism. Many of the essays in his fortnightly Museum, for instance, take their themes from the Earl of Shaftesbury and make explicit references to his Characteristics, the principal statement of the deistic creed. Likewise, Dodsley's Preceptor (1748), a comprehensive instruction for students covering a broad range of subjects, certainly had place for some commentary on formal religion, but instead it maintained a distinctly deistic air throughout. Like all patriotic Protestant Englishmen, though, he was strongly anti-papist, as evident from the virulent titles issued from Tully's Head during the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745.

Although Dodsley shrewdly avoided mixing politics with business, his early sympathies lay with the Opposition, as is clear from the Leicester House personalities who turn up among his friends and authors. Through Pope, a friend of the Prince of Wales (figurehead of the Opposition), Dodsley had probably become acquainted with the Prince's favorite, George (later Lord) Lyttelton, a number of whose works would emanate from Dodsley's in the 1740s. Another leader of the Opposition, the Earl of Chesterfield, would become a regular contributor to Dodsley's publications and, of course, would prove instrumental in securing the performance of Cleone. It is probably not insignificant that Dodsley's play The Toy-shop was once performed (in 1735) at the command of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

To some extent Dodsley's allegiance to the government followed the fortunes of Lyttelton's career. In 1754, when Lyttelton had become a Privy Councillor, Dodsley's anonymous letter late in the year (probably addressed to the Lord) reveals his support of the current government. It was probably also Lyttelton who, as a lord of the Treasury, had secured Dodsley the franking privilege that the bookseller availed himself of during the years 1753 to 1755. In July 1757, however, when the Scottish poet Thomas Blacklock requested Dodsley's intercession to help him gain a post through Lyttelton's political influence, Dodsley regretfully replied that the Baron was not only out of town but now also out of power. Two last political favors suggest that Dodsley had won the respect of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who had become the dominant influence in the Court of the more recent Prince of Wales. A letter to Bute in early December 1758 asking support for his Cleone resulted in the Prince's attendance three days later. In 1762, Dodsley was instrumental in acquiring Bute's permission to allow Baskerville to dedicate his new edition of Horace to the now Secretary of State.

Finally, in an age when mercantilism became synonymous with patriotism in the minds of industrious tradesmen, Dodsley regarded himself as being in the front ranks of patriots. As an early member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts), Dodsley not only worked assiduously to expand the young Society's mission, but also served on many committees to effect the production of native English paper that would relieve the country's dependence on a supply from the Continent. His concept of the Society's role in the nation's progress is no better illustrated than in the letters he wrote to its membership regarding its name and its need to take Letters under its wing. On 14 December 1756, he wrote to propose that the members consider the name “The Philopatrian Society of London,” a name that “most happily includes the very Motive and bond of our Association, namely the Love of our Country; and as every man either is or ought to be a Lover of his Country, and as most men wish at least to be thought so … so honourable and engaging a Name may induce many to associate with us in these good designs.” It was no idle gesture that, in 1757 when Dodsley challenged Garrick to act Cleone at Drury Lane, the playwright offered to donate the third night's profits to the work of the Society.⁵⁰

Notes

1. The Letters of William Shenstone, ed. Marjorie Williams (Oxford: Blackwell, 1939), p. 601. Lady Gough was sister to Sir Henry Gough of nearby Edgbaston.

2. London: George Routledge & Sons, p. 34.

3. Oxford: Clarendon Press, I, 182.

4. Because Ralph Straus's biography seems to have exhausted available evidence on Dodsley's pre-London days, the following account relies on Straus for that period.

5. Perhaps some estrangement or favoritism was at work when John inherited his father's Mansfield property in 1750, property that would have been rightfully Robert's.

6. Straus (p. 9) does not reveal the source of his suggestion. Perhaps his notion of Alvory's pamphlet shop stems from the imprint to Memoirs of Field Marshal Leopold Count Daun (1757): “London printed for R. Withy and J. Ryall; and sold by A. Dodsley.”

7. The problem of copyright ownership is taken up in the notes to Pope's first letter and in Appendix B, section 2.

8. Journal of the House of Lords, 12, 19, 20 February 1739.

9. None the less, Richard Bevis, tracing the development of the sentimental comedy, thinks this “earliest of the sentimental afterpieces was also the best”—The Laughing Tradition. Stage Comedy in Garrick's Day. (Athens, Geo.: University of Georgia Press, 1980), p. 105.

10. I, xxxv-xxxvii.

11. Dodsley mentions (Vol. I, p. 2) that the “Harleian Collection of old Plays, consisting of between 6 and 700 … are now in my Possession.” In The Garrick Collection of Old English Plays (London: The British Library, 1982), George M. Kahrl and Dorothy Anderson trace some of the origins of Dodsley's collection and identify volumes that passed into Garrick's. Reportedly, Garrick had written in his copy of Gerard Langbaine's The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets (1699) the following: “All the Plays marked thus X in this Catalogue I bought of Dodsley.” Garrick's note was recorded by Saunders in his sale catalogue of Garrick's library in 1823 (lot 1269). Garrick's copy of Laingbaine was offered again the same year by Thomas Thorpe (item 14360), but it has since disappeared.

12. Letter to William Duncombe on 6 May 1735. Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), III, 454.

13. R. W. Chapman, “Dodsley's Collection of Poems by Several Hands,” Oxford Bibliographical Society: Proceedings and Papers, III, iii (1933), 269. Donald Eddy qualifies the view in “Dodsley's Collection of Poems by Several Hands (Six Volumes), 1958. Index of Authors.” PBSA, 60 (1966), 11-12.

14. Thomas Percy letter to William Shenstone on 12 March 1760. Correspondence of Thomas Percy and William Shenstone, ed. Cleanth Brooks (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 57.

15. Boswell, Life, I, 192.

16. Dale Randall, “Dodsley's Preceptor—A Window into the 18th Century.” Rutgers University Library Journal, XXII (1958), 10-22.

17. At the time, newspapers were largely controlled by share-holding booksellers, who could effectively squelch competition from new publications simply by refusing to advertise them. For a thorough consideration of the subject, see Michael Harris, “The Management of the London Newspaper Press during the Eighteenth Century,” Publishing History, 4 (1978), pp. 95-112.

18. Recognizing the book value of bound editions of periodicals, many shrewd publishers set a predetermined number of issues as their goal, after which they would discontinue publication and reissue the periodical in collected editions, thereby realizing a second profit on their initial outlay. If the original periodical had enjoyed popular authors, book publication was almost assured of success. For more on the Museum and its contributors, see my article “The Museum, the Super-Excellent Magazine.” SEL, 13 (1973), pp. 503-15.

19. See James's letter to Shenstone on 22 October 1754.

20. Considering all available evidence, as well as opposing opinions, Straus (pp. 169-80) argues convincingly for Dodsley's authorship. The British Library Catalogue of Printed Books credits Dodsley with the work.

21. It is interesting that the title was revised to read: An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Mr. Pope. James Dodsley published the much-delayed second volume in 1782.

22. Boswell, Life, I, 326.

23. Ibid., IV, 20.

24. Originally Phillipps MS 20112, but now in the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

25. Letter to William Mason on 28 September 1757. Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. Paget Toynbee and Leonard Whibley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), II, 530.

26. Vol. IV, Chap. XIII.

27. Perhaps a caution should be urged here. If one were to rely strictly on Dodsley's extant correspondence, it would seem that the production of Volumes V and VI of the Collection pivoted on Shenstone's participation, but this impression results merely from the disproportion of their correspondence in relation to the total number of extant letters from the period.

28. See Harold Forster, Supplements to Dodsley's Collection of Poems (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1980).

29. Moore, patronized by Dodsley's friend George Lyttelton, had gained some reputation in his own right for his Fables for the Female Sex (1744) and for a few plays during the late 1740s.

30. Scholarship has been at great pains to determine exactly when Burke's conduct of the Annual Register concluded. For a survey of the principal opinions and some new evidence, see my article “Edmund Burke, John Hawkesworth, the Annual Register, and the Gentleman's Magazine.” Huntington Library Quarterly, 42 (1978), pp. 57-72.

31. See G. A. Cranfield, “II. The ‘London Evening Post’ and the Jew Bill of 1753.” Historical Journal, 8 (1965), p. 17.

32. See his letter to [?George, Lord Lyttelton] in late 1754.

33. Dodsley's name should be added to those Donald F. McKenzie identifies as partners in the London Magazine. See The Ledger of Charles Akers (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1978), pp. 8-11.

34. Life, I, 317-18.

35. Besides Straus (p. 99), J. A. Cochrane also believes that Dodsley sold his share in the London Chronicle at this time. See the latter's Dr. Johnson's Printer. The Life of William Strahan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 104.

36. See Dodsley's letter on 12 December 1758.

37. March 1761, pp. 150-6.

38. February 1761, pp. 122-7.

39. Fables nouvelles dediquées au roy par M. de la Motte … avec un discours sur la fable (Paris, 1719).

40. See Hylton's letter on 18 February 1761.

41. See Robert Dodsley, An Essay on Fable. Introduction by Jeanne Welcher and Richard Dircks. Augustan Reprint Society. No. 112. (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1965).

42. Voltaire's Correspondence, ed. Theodore Besterman (Geneva, 1956), XX, 20-1.

43. Ibid., XXI, 35-6.

44. The Whitefoord Papers, ed. W. A. S. Hewins (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), p. 227.

45. See Gwin J. Kolb, “Rasselas: Purchase Price, Proprietors, and Printings.” Studies in Bibliography, 15 (1962), pp. 256-9.

46. Boswell, Life, I, 326.

47. Chapman, Letters, I, 69.

48. The Works of Alexander Pope, ed. Joseph Warton (London, 1797).

49. Those of Richard Graves, John Scott Hylton, Richard Jago, Lady Luxborough, Thomas Percy, John Pixell, and Anthony Whistler are documented in the correspondence printed here.

50. For Dodsley's role in the Society, see my article “Robert Dodsley: First Printer and Stationer to the Society.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (July and August, 1983), pp. 480-3, 563-6.