Dobson, Alban, b. 1885

Gwynn, S.L. Revised by Nilanjana Banerji. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/32845. Accessed 14 October 2011. Obituary of Alban Dobson.The Times. 21 May 1962.

English poet, author, and civil servant (Henry) Austin Dobson (1840-1921) was one of several authors employed at the English Board of Trade in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in addition to Edmund Gosse (1849-1928), William Cosmo Monkhouse (1840-1901), and Samuel Waddington (1844-1923), who contributed to its description as a "nest of singing birds."

Dobson's tenure at the Board of Trade lasted from 1856 until his retirement in 1901, during which the majority of his work was conducted in the marine department; he was appointed a principal clerk in 1884. Dobson's literary career began in the 1860s with the publication of his poetry in various magazines, including Anthony Trollope's St. Paul's Magazine . Trollope was influential in encouraging the young poet's work, and Dobson dedicated his first volume of poetry, Vignettes in Rhyme (1873), to Trollope. Dobson's poetry, which showed a fondness for French verse forms such as the triolet and the rondeau, enjoyed a popularity that kept many of his volumes running through numerous editions.

Dobson ceased writing much new verse in the mid-1880s and turned his attention to prose work. Dobson was considered a leading authority on eighteenth-century literary and artistic figures such as Oliver Goldsmith, Horace Walpole, William Hogarth, and Henry Fielding. He authored volumes on Fielding, Hogarth, Samuel Richardson, and Goldsmith, and his reputation as a biographer and essayist led to his writing many prefaces and introductions to new volumes on these figures, as well as shorter entries for the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Dobson even wrote the DNB entry for his friend and Board of Trade colleague Cosmo Monkhouse.

In 1868, Dobson married Frances Mary Beardmore (d. 1927), daughter of prominent engineer Nathaniel Beardmore (1816-1872), who also wrote children's fiction under the pen name Franc Mari. The couple had ten children, all of whom survived their father.

Austin Dobson's youngest son Alban Dobson (1885-1962) went on to manage his father's literary estate and authored several volumes on his father, including A Bibliography of the First Editions of Published and Privately Printed Books and Pamphlets by Austin Dobson (1925); Austin Dobson: Some Notes by Alban Dobson (1928); and Catalogue of the Collection of the Works of Austin Dobson, 1840-1921 (1960) and edited the Complete Poetical Works of Austin Dobson (1923); An Anthology of Prose & Verse (1925); and Selected Poems (1949). Like his father, Alban Dobson enjoyed a successful career as a civil servant. He served as the secretary of the International Whaling Commission from 1949 to 1959 and Fisheries Adviser, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries from 1946 to 1954. Alban Dobson's son, Christopher Dobson (1916-2005) succeeded Charles Clay as Librarian of the House of Lords in 1956, serving until his retirement in 1977. Christopher Dobson also took an active interest in his grandfather's literary works and legacy.

Alban Dobson donated the majority of his personal collection of Austin Dobson's books and manuscripts to the University of London Library (now the Senate House Library) in 1946, to which significant portions of the collections of Christopher Dobson and other family members have been added. Alban Dobson published a catalog of the collection in 1960.

From the guide to the Austin Dobson collection, 1762-1999, 1861-1962, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)