author
Austin Dobson
1840–1921
Known for graceful, witty verse and a deep love of the 18th century, this English poet brought French poetic forms like the ballade and rondeau into fashionable use in Victorian England. He also wrote lively biographies and essays that helped keep earlier literary worlds vividly alive for later readers.
6 Audiobooks
De Libris: Prose and Verse
by Austin Dobson
Collected Poems in Two Volumes, Vol. II
by Austin Dobson
Fielding
by Austin Dobson
Eighteenth Century Vignettes
by Austin Dobson
Horace Walpole: A memoir With an appendix of books printed at the Strawberry Hill Press
by Austin Dobson
Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay)
by Austin Dobson
About the author
Born in Plymouth in 1840, Austin Dobson was an English poet, essayist, and biographer who spent much of his working life in the British Board of Trade, eventually serving in its Harbour Department. Alongside that civil-service career, he built a literary reputation for polished, light verse and for his gift for making the past feel charmingly present.
Dobson became especially admired for adapting French verse forms into English and for writing with elegance, wit, and a warm eye for detail. His poetry often drew on the manners, objects, and moods of the 18th century, a period he knew deeply and returned to again and again in both verse and prose.
He also wrote biographies and critical studies of figures such as Fielding, Steele, Goldsmith, and Fanny Burney. That combination of poet, critic, and literary historian made him an appealing guide to an earlier age, and his work still attracts readers who enjoy cultured humor, formal craft, and a strong sense of literary atmosphere.