DODSLEY, Robert (1703-1761), an eminent bookseller and versatile writer, born in 1703 at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father is said to have been a schoolmaster. In his youth he was apprenticed to a stocking-weaver, from whom he ran away, taking service as a footman. His first poetical attempts seem to have been made when he was a servant in the family of the Hon. Mrs Lowther, and were published by subscription under the title of The Muse in Livery, or the Footman's Miscellany (1732). This was followed by an elegant little satirical farce called The Toyshop, the hint of which is said to have been taken from Randolph’s Muse's Looking-glass, and which, having obtained the approbation of Pope, was acted at Coven t Garden with great success. The profits accruing from the sale of these two publications enabled him to establish himself as bookseller in Pall-Mall; and his merit and enterprising spirit soon made him one of the foremost publishers of the day. One of the first copyrights he published was that of Johnson’s London, for which he gave ten guineas in 1738, and he was afterwards the leader of the association of booksellers that famished Johnson with funds for the preparation of his English Dictionary. In 1737 a new piece of his own, entitled The King and the Miller of Mansfield, was received with undiminished applause. His immediately subsequent farces, however, were not so popular. In 1738 he published a collection of his dramatic works in one volume 8vo, under the modest title of Trifi.es , which was followed by the Triumph of Peace, a masque, occasioned by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, and a fragment on Public Virtue. Dodsley was also the author of the Economy of Human Life, a work which acquired considerable celebrity; but for this it is supposed he ...