Publication Number 218-219

The Toy Shop (1735) The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737)

The career of Robert Dodsley (1703-1764), or "Doddy" as Samuel Johnson affectionately called him, resembles nothing so much as the rise of Francis Goodchild in Hogarth's Industry and Idleness (1747) series. Like Goodchild, Dodsley began as a humble apprentice and, through energy, ingenuity, and laudable ambition, grew prosperous and gained the esteem of all London. Today Dodsley is remembered as the most important publisher of his period, a man who numbered among his authors Pope, Young, Akenside, Gray, Johnson, Burke, Shenstone, and Sterne. His long-labored Collection of Poems (1748) rescued many of his contemporaries' works from pamphlet obscurity and even now provides both the best and the most representative introduction to mid-eighteenth-century English poetry. His twelve-volume A Select Collection of Old Plays (1744) made the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, long out of print, available again. It is one of the minor ironies of literary history that the man who did so much to insure the survival of the poems and plays of others has had his own almost entirely forgotten. For Dodsley was not always a bookseller. When he escaped his country apprenticeship and fled to London to work as a footman, Dodsley had his heart set on literary distinction; and it was first as poet and later as playwright that he came to the attention of the Town. Although a few of his poems are as ingratiating as Dodsley himself is reported to have been, most are now aesthetically irretrievable. His dramas, in contrast, remain interesting. Two of the bestThe Toy-Shop (1735) and The King and the Miller of Mansfield (1737)were much more popular than his earlier poems and for a time made him seem the equal of fellow dramatist Henry Fielding. So great was the vogue of these two works that Dodsley has been described as the principal developer of the sentimental or moralizing afterpiece.[1] Both works are short afterpieces intended to complement or contrast with the full-length play on the day's bill and both moralize conspicuously; the two plays could, however, hardly be more different in tone and technique. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 36491
Author: Dodsley, Robert
Release Date: Jun 21, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Solomon, Harry M