Life

Dodsley was born near Mansfield

Mansfield

Mansfield is a town in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the main town in the Mansfield local government district. Mansfield is a part of the Mansfield Urban Area....

 in Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...

 in 1724. He was probably employed in the shop of his prosperous brother, Robert

Robert Dodsley

Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....

, by whom he was taken into partnership—the firm trading as R. & J. Dodsley in Pall Mall—and whom he eventually succeeded in 1759.

The plan of the tax on receipts was suggested by him to the Rockingham administration in 1782. On 7 June 1787 he lost £2,500 worth of quirestock, burnt in a warehouse. He paid the usual fine instead of serving the office of Sheriff of London and Middlesex in 1788.

He led a secluded life, and some years before his death gave up his shop, dealing wholesale in his own publications. The retail business was taken over by George Nicol

George Nicol (bookseller)

George Nicol was a bookseller and publisher in 18th-century London. In 1781, he became bookseller to George III, a position he held until 1820. In 1785, he published an improved edition of James Cook's third voyage. In 1786, he became involved with John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and bore...

. He kept a carriage many years, but studiously wished that his friends should not know it, nor did he ever use it on the eastern side of Temple Bar

Temple Bar

Temple Bar may refer to:* The Temple Bar, a spot in London* Temple Bar, Dublin, a cultural quarter in Dublin city* Temple Bar, Ceredigion, a village in Wales* Temple Bar Magazine, British literary magazine published 1860 to 1906...

, according to the Gentleman's Magazine.

Publications

In 1775 he printed 'A Petition and Complaint touching a Piracy of "Letters by the late Earl of Chesterfield,"' A list of forty-one works published by him is advertised at the end of Thomas Hull's 'Select Letters,' 1778, 2 vols. 8vo. In 1780 he produced an improved edition of the 'Collection of Old Plays,' 12 vols., edited by Isaac Reed

Isaac Reed

Isaac Reed was an English Shakespearean editor.-Life:The son of a baker, he was born in London. He was articled to a solicitor, and eventually set up as a conveyancer at Staple Inn, where he had a large practice.-Works:...

, who also edited for him again, two years later, the 'Collection of Poems,' 6 vols. He was a member of the "Congeries", a club of booksellers who produced Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

's Lives of the Poets and other works. Dodsley was the puzzled referee in a well-known bet about Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...

's lines,

For he who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day,

which George Selwyn correctly contended were not to be found in Butler's Hudibras

Hudibras

Hudibras is an English mock heroic narrative poem from the 17th century written by Samuel Butler.-Purpose:The work is a satirical polemic upon Roundheads, Puritans, Presbyterians and many of the other factions involved in the English Civil War...

.

Dodsley carried on an extensive business, but had other interests; writing from Woodstock on 26 July 1789 Thomas King

Thomas King

Thomas King, CM is a noted novelist and broadcaster who most often writes about North America's First Nations. He is an advocate for First Nations causes. He is of Cherokee and Greek descent...

 refers to his farming and haymaking. Eighteen thousand copies of Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....

's Reflections on the Revolution in France were sold by him in 1790.

Death

He died on 19 February 1797 at his house in Pall Mall

Pall Mall

-Places:* Pall Mall, urban downtown ares of Bendigo, Australia* Pall Mall, London, a street in the City of Westminster, London* Pall Mall, Tennessee, a small unincorporated community in Fentress County, Tennessee...

 in his seventy-fourth year, and was buried in St James's Church, Westminster. He left the bulk of his fortune, estimated at £70,000, to nephews and nieces.