James Dodsley was a London bookseller and publisher together with his brother, Robert. They published works by Frances Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, James Bowsell and Samuel Johnson. A memorial tablet in St James’s Church, Westminster, describes James as “upright and liberal in all his dealings, a friend to the afflicted in general, and to the poor of this parish in particular.” In 1780 he produced an improved edition of the Collection of Old Plays, edited by Isaac Reed, who also edited the Collection of Poems two years later. He sold 18,000 copies of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790.