The new biography of the publisher and bookseller who premiered the work of Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson deftly integrates Dodsley's life story with the literary transition from court patronage to the age of print that paved the way for the Romantic movement of the 19th century. Solomon (English, Auburn U.) details the unique circumstances that led Dodsley from his position as a weaver's apprentice to his career as a playwright, culminating in his last incarnation as one of the most influential literary forces of his time. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This fully annotated edition sheds much light on eighteenth-century British literary and publishing history.

'The Lab'ring Muses' is the first study to bring together a wide range of verse published by laboring-class authors between 1730 and 1830. The book examines a total of sixteen case studies that establish a specifically English tradition of laboring-class poetics.