ABSTRACT
Robert Dodsley was a man of many talents. Dodsley turns up next employed as a footman to Charles Dartiquenave, the epicure and humorist. The subscribers' list to A Muse in Ijvery shows that Dodsley's patrons exerted themselves, collecting above two hundred names, including many titled and fashionable people. Dodsley would go on to become one of the most successful bookseller/publishers of his era. Pope's influence was crucial early on, as he shifted some of his business from his regular publisher, Lawton Gilliver, to Dodsley. Although Dodsley earned the respect of his contemporaries more as a bookseller/publisher than as an author, he nevertheless continued to write and publish throughout his business career. Dodsley also had a hand in several ill-fated periodicals designed to compete with Cave's popular Gentleman's Magazine, before signing Edmund Burke to write and compile the Annual Register, a venture that was so successful it continued well into the twentieth century.
