Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 166, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1916 — Footman Was a Poet. [ARTICLE]

Footman Was a Poet.

At least one domestic servant — though a male and not a female made a lasting contribution to English literature in the eighteenth century. This was Robert Dodsley, who as a young man served as a footman, and brought out his first works, “Servitude: a Poem,” and “The Muse in Livery, or the Footman’s Miscellany,” while still in service. With the proceeds of these works and a farce, "The Toyshop,” produced at Convent Garden, he set up as a bookseller in Pall Mall, and within a few years became the most prominent of London publishers, issuing books for Pope, Johnson and Goldsmith, inaugurating the “Annual Register,” and still trifling with the muse himself, besides collecting and editing an invaluable selection of “Old Plays.”—London Chronicle.