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Robert Dodsley |
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When on a tour of Oxford in 1776 Samuel Johnson was discussing biography with Thomas Warton, his companion James Boswell suggested that "Robert Dodsley's life should be written, as he has been so much connected with the wits of his time, and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station of a footman" (Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791). As Boswell suggests, Dodsley remains a fascinating figure both because of his rise from servitude to literary success and because of his significant connections as the most important English publisher of the century, working with Johnson, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Edward Young, Mark Akenside, William Shenstone, Samuel Richardson, David Garrick, Joseph and Thomas Warton, William Collins, Thomas Gray, Thomas Percy, Horace Walpole, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Laurence Sterne, and the Earl of Chesterfield, among many others. Thus, if the concept of literary influence is extended to include not only the influence of Dodsley's own works but the works of others that he either initiated or published, a convincing case can be made that Robert Dodsley was the most influential English man of letters during his lifetime.
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