Henry Austin Dobson

Henry Austin Dobson (18 January 1840 – 2 September 1921), commonly Austin Dobson, was an English poet and essayist.

He was born at Plymouth, the eldest son of George Clarisse Dobson, a civil engineer, of French descent. When he was about eight, the family moved to Holyhead, and his first school was at Beaumaris in Anglesey. He was later educated at Coventry, and the Gymnase, Strasbourg. He returned at the age of sixteen with the intention of becoming a civil engineer. (His younger brother James would in fact become a noted engineer, helping complete the Buenos Aires harbour works in the 1880s and 1890s.) At the beginning of his career, he continued to study at the South Kensington School of Art, in his spare time, but without definite ambition. In December 1856 he entered the Board of Trade, gradually rising to the rank of principal in the harbour department, from which he retired in the autumn of 1901. In 1868, he had married Frances Mary, daughter of the distinguished civil engineer Nathaniel Beardmore (1816–1872) of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and settled at Ealing. Dobson died in 1921 and his funeral was held on 6 September at St Peter's Church, Ealing. He is buried in the Westminster Cemetery, Uxbridge Rd, Hanwell, Middlesex.

His official career was uneventful, but as a poet and biographer he was distinguished. Those who study his work are struck by its maturity. It was about 1864 that he turned his attention to writing original prose and verse, and some of his earliest work was his best. It was not until 1868 that the appearance of St Paul's, a magazine edited by Anthony Trollope, gave Harry Dobson an opportunity and an audience; and during the next six years he contributed some of his favourite poems, including "Tu Quoque," "A Gentleman of the Old School," "A Dialogue from Plato," and "Une Marquise." Many of his poems in their original form were illustrated—some, indeed, were written to support illustrations.

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