Dobson, Henry Austin (1840–1921)

English poet, critic, and biographer. He issued several books of verse, his best appearing as Vignettes in Rhyme (1873), Proverbs in Porcelain (1877), and Old World Idylls (1883). His collected poems were published in 1897. An authority on the Georgian period, he wrote monographs on Henry Fielding (1883), Richard Steele (1886), Oliver Goldsmith (1888), Horace Walpole (1890), William Hogarth (1891), Samuel Richardson (1902), and Fanny Burney (1903).

Born in Plymouth, Devon, Dobson was educated partly in France, and worked at the Board of Trade 1856–91. He also published Eighteenth Century Vignettes (three series,1892, 1894, 1896) and At Prior Park and Other Papers (1912).