Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY THE TOY-SHOP (1735) THE KING AND THE MILLER OF MANSFIELD (1737) _ROBERT DODSLEY_ _Introduction by_ HARRY M. SOLOMON Publication Number 218-219 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY University of California, Los Angeles 1983 GENERAL EDITOR DAVID STUART RODES, _University of California, Los Angeles_ EDITORS CHARLES L. BATTEN, _University of California, Los Angeles_ GEORGE ROBERT GUFFEY, _University of California, Los Angeles_ MAXIMILLIAN E. NOVAK, _University of California, Los Angeles_ NANCY M. SHEA, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ THOMAS WRIGHT, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ ADVISORY EDITORS RALPH COHEN, _University of Virginia_ WILLIAM E. CONWAY, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ VINTON A. DEARING, _University of California, Los Angeles_ PHILLIP HARTH, _University of Wisconsin, Madison_ LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_ EARL MINER, _Princeton University_ JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_ NORMAN J. W. THROWER, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ ROBERT VOSPER, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ JOHN M. WALLACE, _University of Chicago_ PUBLICATIONS MANAGER NANCY M. SHEA, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ CORRESPONDING SECRETARY BEVERLY J. ONLEY, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ EDITORIAL ASSISTANT FRANCES MIRIAM REED, _University of California, Los Angeles_ INTRODUCTION The career of ROBERT DODSLEY (1703-1764), or "Doddy" as Samuel Johnson affectionately called him, resembles nothing so much as the rise of Francis Goodchild in Hogarth's _Industry and Idleness_ (1747) series. Like Goodchild, Dodsley began as a humble apprentice and, through energy, ingenuity, and laudable ambition, grew prosperous and gained the esteem of all London. Today Dodsley is remembered as the most important publisher of his period, a man who numbered among his authors Pope, Young, Akenside, Gray, Johnson, Burke, Shenstone, and Sterne. His long-labored _Collection of Poems_ (1748) rescued many of his contemporaries' works from pamphlet obscurity and even now provides both the best and the most representative introduction to mid-eighteenth-century English poetry. His twelve-volume _A Select Collection of Old Plays_ (1744) made the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, long out of print, available again.