The late-nineteenth-century vogue for light verse, especially in forms borrowed from the French, is well illustrated by the poetry of Austin Dobson, whose craftsmanship and formal elegance give permanence to a body of poetry that is unremarkable for the profundity of its themes. Perhaps best remembered now for his biographical scholarship, Dobson was in his own time a widely known and admired poet both in England and America, and many of his books were published in multiple editions, testifying to the popularity of verse whose nostalgia for the eighteenth century offered a secure haven removed from the daily vicissitudes of Victorian life.

Born at Plymouth, England, on 18 January 1840, Henry Austin Dobson was the son of George Clarisse Dobson, a civil engineer, and Augusta Harris Dobson. He was educated at Beaumaris Grammar School, at a Coventry private school, and at the gymnase in Strasbourg. At the age of sixteen...