Bertram Dobell
Bertram Dobell | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Portrait from In Memoriam. Bertram Dobell. 1842-1914 (1915) | |
| Born | 9 January 1842 Battle, East Sussex, England |
| Died | 14 December 1914 (aged 72) Haverstock Hill, London, England |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse |
Eleanor Wymer
(m. 1869; died 1910) |
| Children | 5 |
| Relatives | Doug Dobell (grandson) |
| Signature | |
 | |
Bertram Dobell (9 January 1842 – 14 December 1914) was an English bookseller and literary scholar. Largely self-educated, he became a London bookseller and published or reissued works by writers including James Thomson and Thomas Traherne. Dobell also wrote poetry, literary criticism, and biographical works.
Biography
[edit]Early life and family
[edit]Bertram Dobell was born on 9 January 1842 in Battle, East Sussex, the son of Edward Dobell, a tailor of Huguenot descent, and Elizabeth Dobell (née Eldridge).[1][2][3] His father was disabled by paralysis at an early age, and the family lived in difficult circumstances.[4]
Dobell received little formal education and entered the workforce at an early age.[5] In London, he first worked as a grocer's errand boy and later became an assistant in the shop. As a child, he used his spare pennies to buy second-hand books and pamphlets.[3]
On 24 July 1869, he married Eleanor Wymer (1847–1910). The couple had five children.[2]
Career in bookselling
[edit]In 1872, Dobell and his wife opened a stationer and newsagent's shop in Queen's Crescent, Kentish Town.[3] He later established two second-hand bookshops on Charing Cross Road, which became known among book collectors.[2]
Dobel's booksellers' catalogues also drew literary notice. Arthur Quiller-Couch praised him for continuing "the good tradition which knits writers, printers, vendors, and purchasers of books together", and wrote that Dobell took pains to make his second-hand catalogues "better reading than half the new books printed".[6]
Literary connections
[edit]Dobell developed friendships with several contemporary writers, including the poet James Thomson. He later edited and published Thomson's poetry in book form.[2]
Dobell was a member of the interim committee of the Shelley Society.[7]
Death
[edit]Dobell died of liver cancer on 14 December 1914 at his home in Haverstock Hill, London, aged 72.[2] An obituary was published in The New York Times.[4]
Following Dobell's death, his business passed to his sons Percy and Arthur, who had both worked for him.[8]
Works
[edit]
Dobell edited works by Thomas Traherne, Shelley, Oliver Goldsmith, William Strode, and James Thomson.[2] He first issued books through other publishers, but later began publishing under his own imprint. His early publications under that imprint included a "cheaper and more popular" edition of Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night in 1899.[9]
Dobell privately published a collection of his own verse, Rosemary and Pansies, in 1901, and reissued it in expanded form in 1904. The expanded edition received notice for its satires and epigrams, and contained a dozen haikai, among the early English experiments with the Japanese poetic form later known as haiku.[10][11]
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).[2]
References
[edit]- ↑ "Bertram Dobell Biography (1842-1914)". Victorian Era. Archived from the original on 2 July 2020. Retrieved 20 February 2021.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Rota, Anthony (23 September 2004). "Dobell, Bertram". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32843. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
- 1 2 3 Sullivan, Dick (26 January 2008). "The Victorian Discovery of Thomas Traherne's Lost Manuscripts". Victorian Web. Retrieved 8 March 2026.
- 1 2 "Dobell, Famous Bookseller, Dead; London Dealer Was a Poet As Well, and Discoverer of Rare Manuscripts. Hated To Sell Treasures Publication of the Works of James Thomson and Thomas Traherne Due to Him;- Was 73 Years Old". The New York Times. 27 December 1914. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 8 March 2026.
- ↑ McCabe, Joseph (1920). "Dobell, Bertram". A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists. London: Watts & Co. p. 218 – via Internet Archive.
- ↑ Quiller-Couch, Arthur (1924). "Of Oliver Goldsmith and a Printer's Devil". Adventures in Criticism. London: Cambridge University Press. p. 29.
- ↑ Shelley, Percy Bysshe; Dowden, Edward; Wise, Thomas James (1886). "Shelley Society Prospectus". Review of Hogg's "Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff" by Percy Bysshe Shelley; Together With an Extract From "Some Early Writings of Shelley'". London: Published for the Shelley Society by Reeves and Turner.
- ↑ "Percy Dobell". Antiquarian Booksellers' Association. Retrieved 8 March 2026.
- ↑ Bradbury, S. (1909). "A List of the Works Written or Edited by Bertram Dobell". Bertram Dobell; Bookseller and Man of Letters. London: Bertram Dobell. pp. 28–32.
- ↑ "Satire and Seriousness". The Outlook: 591. 9 July 1904.
- ↑ Marx, Edward (2019). Yone Noguchi: The Stream of Fate. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara: Botchan Books. p. 275. ISBN 978-1-939913-05-0.
Further reading
[edit]- Dobell, Percy John (1915). In Memoriam. Bertram Dobell. 1842-1914. London.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Blom, J. M.; Blom, F. J. M. (October 1999). "Bertram Dobell, Sonnets & Lyrics. A little book of verse on the present war (1915)". English Studies. 80 (5): 454–461. doi:10.1080/00138389908599198. ISSN 0013-838X.
- Korsten, Frans (1 August 2000). "'An Heretical Bookworm': Bertram Dobell's Life and Career". English Studies. 81 (4): 305–327. doi:10.1076/0013-838X(200007)81:4;1-F;FT305. ISSN 0013-838X.
External links
[edit]
- Works by Bertram Dobell at Project Gutenberg
- Works by Bertram Dobell at the Internet Archive
- Works by Bertram Dobell at the Online Books Page
- Works by Bertram Dobell at AllPoetry
- Bertram Dobell Archive at the Bodleian Library
- Bertram Dobell at Layers of London
- 1842 births
- 1914 deaths
- 19th-century English essayists
- 19th-century English male writers
- 19th-century English poets
- 19th-century English scholars
- 19th-century English publishers (people)
- 20th-century English biographers
- 20th-century English essayists
- 20th-century English male writers
- 20th-century English poets
- 20th-century English publishers (people)
- 20th-century scholars
- British literary scholars
- Businesspeople from Sussex
- Deaths from liver cancer in England
- English book editors
- English book publishers (people)
- English booksellers
- English essayists
- English male essayists
- People from Battle, East Sussex
- Poets from London
- Publishers (people) from London
- Victorian poets
- Writers from Battle, East Sussex
- Writers from London