Bertram Dobell

{{Short description|English bookseller, literary scholar, editor, poet, essayist and publisher (1842–1914)}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Bertram Dobell

| image = Bertram Dobell (cropped).jpg

| alt =

| caption = Portrait from In Memoriam. Bertram Dobell. 1842-1914

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1842|01|09|df=y}}

| birth_place = Battle, East Sussex, England

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1914|12|14|1842|01|09|df=y}}

| death_place = Haverstock Hill, London, England

| occupation = {{hlist|Bookseller|scholar|editor|poet|essayist|publisher}}

| years_active =

| spouse = {{marriage|Eleanor Wymer|24 July 1869|1910|end=d.}}

| children = 5

| signature = Bertram Dobell signature.svg

}}

Bertram Dobell (9 January 1842 – 14 December 1914) was an English bookseller, literary scholar, editor, poet, essayist and publisher.

Biography

Bertram Dobell was born on 9 January 1842 in Battle, East Sussex, to Edward Dobell, a tailor, and his wife Elizabeth.{{Cite web|title=Bertram Dobell Biography (1842-1914)|url=http://victorian-era.org/bertram-dobell-biography.html|url-status=live|access-date=2021-02-20|website=Victorian Era|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702155328/http://victorian-era.org:80/bertram-dobell-biography.html |archive-date=2020-07-02 }} He received little education and started work at a young age.{{Cite book|last=McCabe|first=Joseph|url=https://archive.org/stream/modernrati00mccauoft|title=A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists|publisher=Watts & Co.|year=1920|location=London|page=[https://archive.org/stream/modernrati00mccauoft#page/111 218]}} Dobell married Eleanor Wymer (1847–1910) on 24 July 1869; they had five children.

Dobell opened a newsvendor's shop in 1872; he went on to become the proprietor of two bookshops in Charing Cross Road, which were well respected by contemporary book collectors. In addition to continuing "the good tradition which knits writers, printers, vendors, and purchasers of books together," Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote, Dobell was "at pains to make his second-hand catalogues better reading than half the new books printed, and they cost us nothing."{{Cite book |last=Quillen-Couch |first=Arthur |url=http://archive.org/details/AdventuresInCriticism |title=Adventures in Criticism |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1924 |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/AdventuresInCriticism/page/n44/mode/1up 29] |chapter=Of Oliver Goldsmith and a Printer's Devil}}

Dobell formed close friendships with a number of contemporary writers, most notably the poet James Thomson, whose poems he helped publish in book form.

Dobell died from liver cancer at his home in Haverstock Hill, London, on 14 December 1914, at the age of 72.{{Cite ODNB|id=32843|title=Dobell, Bertram}}

Works

As an author, Dobell was best known for his editions of the works of Thomas Traherne (whose unpublished manuscripts he had discovered), Shelley, Goldsmith, Strode and James Thomson.

At first, Dobell issued his books through other publishers, but after some collaborative ventures, he began publishing under his own imprint, beginning with a "cheaper and more popular" edition of Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night in 1899.{{Cite book|last=Bradbury|first=S.|url=http://archive.org/details/bertramdobellboo00brad|title=Bertram Dobell; Bookseller and Man of Letters|publisher=Bertram Dobell|year=1909|location=London|pages=28–32|chapter=A List of the Works Written or Edited by Bertram Dobell}}

This was followed by a privately published collection of his own verse, Rosemary and Pansies (1901), which, after favorable reception, he reissued in expanded form in 1904. This received some praise for its satires and epigrams,"Satire and Seriousness," The Outlook, 9 July 1904, 591. and contained, as well, a dozen haikai, one of the first English experiments with the recently-imported Japanese poetic form afterward known as haiku.Edward Marx, Yone Noguchi: The Stream of Fate, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara: Botchan Books, 2019), 275. {{ISBN|978-1-939913-05-0}}.

Dobell's other books included A Century of Sonnets (1910), and the biographies Sidelights on Charles Lamb (1903) and The Laureate of Pessimism: a Sketch of the Life of James Thomson (1910).

References

External links

{{Wikisource author-inline}}
[https://archives.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repositories/2/resources/8354 Archive of Bertram Dobell] at the Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts

Category:1842 births

Category:1914 deaths

Category:19th-century English businesspeople

Category:19th-century English male writers

Category:19th-century English poets

Category:19th-century scholars

Category:20th-century English male writers

Category:20th-century English poets

Category:20th-century scholars

Category:Deaths from liver cancer in England

Category:English book editors

Category:English booksellers