author
Robert Dodsley
1703–1764
From a start as a footman, he rose to become one of the most influential booksellers and publishers in 18th-century London. His writing and editorial work helped shape the literary world around figures such as Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, and Oliver Goldsmith.
5 Audiobooks
Bewick's Select Fables of Æsop and others. In three parts. 1. Fables extracted from Dodsley's. 2. Fables with reflections in prose and verse. 3. Fables in verse.
by Aesop, Robert Dodsley
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 15
by Robert Dodsley
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 13
by Robert Dodsley
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 12
by Robert Dodsley
The Toy Shop (1735) The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737)
by Robert Dodsley
About the author
Born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1703, Robert Dodsley built an unusually wide-ranging career as a poet, playwright, bookseller, publisher, and editor. He is often remembered for the remarkable path that took him from service work into the center of London literary life.
As a publisher and bookseller, he became a key figure in mid-18th-century English literature. He was associated with the publication of major writers including Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, and Oliver Goldsmith, and he also edited important collections that helped preserve and circulate earlier and contemporary writing.
Dodsley was not only a man of the book trade but a writer in his own right. His plays, poems, and miscellaneous prose made him well known in his day, and his long career shows how closely writing, editing, and publishing could come together in one energetic literary life.