Robert Dodsley, Melpomene or The Regions of Terror and Pity An Ode

Ian Gordon (Anglia Ruskin University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1757

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Ode
Poetry (any)

Resources

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Robert Dodsley arranged to have his poem,

Melpomene: Or The Regions of Terror and Pity. An Ode

published anonymously in September 1757. The title page of the sixteen-page pamphlet did not carry, as such pages normally did, the name of the author, publisher or printer, as Dodsley did not want the reading public to have any preconceptions concerning the quality of the poem based on knowledge, either of the author’s name, or of the poem’s provenance. He wanted his ode’s readers to consider it as a poem by an as-yet-unknown poet. In this he was largely successful, with Thomas Gray, the finest ode-writer of the mid-eighteenth century, writing to his friend William Mason at the end of September saying, “I have had a printed ode sent me, called Melpomene. Pray, who wrote it? . . . I like…

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1311 words

Citation: Gordon, Ian. "Melpomene or The Regions of Terror and Pity An Ode". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 December 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16870, accessed 24 November 2024.]

Robert Dodsley, Melpomene or The Regions of Terror and Pity An Ode

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