SOURCE: Gillespie, Stuart. “The Early Years of the Dryden-Tonson Partnership: The Background to Their Composite Translations and Miscellanies of the 1680s.” Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 12, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 10-19.

In the following essay, Gillespie offers a reinterpretation of the evidence concerning the translation projects undertaken by Dryden and Tonson in the 1680s.

One of the most influential literary partnerships of the seventeenth century commenced when, in 1679, Jacob Tonson first printed the work of John Dryden. In the following seven years, four unusual productions emerged from their alliance to set a number of decisive directions for both men's later careers. The compilations Ovid's Epistles (1680), Plutarch's Lives (1683-86), Miscellany Poems (1684), and Sylvae: or, the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies (1685) contained the first fruits of Dryden's work as translator of the classics; they established Tonson as a leading publisher of contemporary translation and settled for the future his “several...