Austin Dobson
Austin Dobson was a British poet and biographer, known for his significant contributions to literary biography in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in a relatively unremarkable setting, he completed his education at the Gymnase Strasburg and later embarked on a career in civil service, where he worked as a clerk for the Board of Trade until his retirement in 1901. Dobson began writing poetry in the 1860s, publishing his work in St. Paul's Magazine, and he married Francis Mary Beardmore, with whom he raised ten children in Ealing, London.
His literary journey evolved as he shifted focus from poetry to biography, with notable works including "The Civil Service History of England" and "The Civil Service Handbook of English Literature". By 1879, he had published several biographies of prominent 18th-century authors, including Henry Fielding and Jane Austen. Dobson's scholarly approach combined limited research with a style that often involved quoting extensively from his subjects. Despite criticisms regarding the depth of his analysis, he earned respect for his perseverance and distinctive voice in literary history, maintaining a somewhat conservative perspective throughout his work. Dobson passed away in 1921, leaving behind a legacy appreciated by literary historians.
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Austin Dobson
Poet
- Born: January 18, 1840
- Birthplace: Plymouth, Devonshire, England
- Died: September 2, 1921
Biography
Austin Dobson’s childhood and youth were fairly unremarkable except for the final phase of his formal education, which he completed at the Gymnase Strasburg, where he was the only British student. And upon returning to England, in 1856 he took up an unremarkable profession in civil service, working as a clerk for the Board of Trade until he retired in 1901. Ironically, perhaps, this position would provide him with a platform on which to distinguish himself.
Dobson began his literary career in the 1860’s writing poetry during his commute to and from the Board of Trade. He began publishing his work in St. Paul’s Magazine, edited by another civil servant-cum-literary man, Anthony Trollope. In 1868, he married Francis Mary Beardmore, with whom he had five sons and five daughters. They lived at the same address in the London suburb of Ealing until his death in 1921.
Dobson published his first collection of poetry in 1873, but by then he had found his true métier while working, first on The Civil Service History of England (1870), and then on The Civil Service Handbook of English Literature (1874). These books, intended as study aids for those preparing for the British civil service examinations, introduced Dobson to the art of literary biography and to the British public. As his interest in biography grew, that in poetry waned, and the publication of Dobson’s Hogarth in 1879 began a long and prolific period of writing literary biography during which he produced biographies of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Richard Steele, Oliver Goldsmith, Hugh Walpole, Jane Austen, and numerous other eighteenth century literary personages. By the turn of the next century Dobson’s expertise in eighteenth century literary biography was so well established that he was asked to introduce or edit virtually every book on the subject that appeared.
Dobson’s productivity owed much to his development of a systematic approach to the genre that combined limited research into in a given subject’s correspondence and published works with a penchant for rather superficial moral evaluation. This approach permitted him to devote large portions of his books to quotation from his subjects’ own words and so assume a mantle of authority he perhaps did not fully deserve. And, as in poetry, his prose works reflect—in his choice of subject matter, if nothing else—a decidedly backward-looking, conservative approach to art and life. Yet Dobson retains the respect of literary historians for his perseverance, his wry sense of humor, and his unwillingness—or inability—to hide his prejudices.