Elizabeth Dodd and Anne Dodd, Jr.

J. Dodd and Elizabeth Dodd appeared on imprints from The Bible, in West Street, Seven Dials, from 1771 to 1789, sharing that address for a time with an E. Englefield, who, like J. Dodd, sold works by James Wakelin (Englefield appeared on imprints in 1760 and 1773). Elizabeth Dodd only appeared on two imprints from the Seven Dials location, both involving sermons and writings by dissenting ministers (one in 1773 and the other in 1775) and sold solely in conjunction with other dissenting women printers and booksellers, the first with Mary Lewis and the second with Martha Gurney and Rachel Potter, a unique claim for any woman bookseller in the eighteenth century. The third imprint on which “E. Dodd” appears is an account of a murderer and his execution in 1786 sold exclusively from Dodd’s location at No. 9, Cockspur-Street, Hay-Market, not far from Seven Dials but given the new address and the nature of the publication, this may not be the same Elizabeth Dodd of the 1773 and 1775 imprints. J. Dodd was clearly a relation of Elizabeth Dodd, most likely her husband or son. J. Dodd appeared on nine imprints between 1771 and 1789, of which five were works by James Wakelin, including A Golden Key to Open Heaven’s Gate (1771) and A Short Scriptural Explication of the Faith and Doctrine of the Church of England (1776), both sold in conjunction with Mary Lewis. After her retirement, Dodd continued to work closely with the proprietors at 1 Paternoster Row, selling five works with Henry Trapp between 1783 and 1789. These Dodds are not to be confused with Benjamin Dod, bookseller to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, at the Bible and Key, 12 Ave-Mary Lane, Ludgate Street, near St. Paul’s; he died in 1766 after only one year in business and was succeeded by E. Johnson. No references to an Elizabeth or J. Dodd at Seven Dials appear in H. R. Plomer, et. al., ed., Dictionaries of the Printers and Booksellers who were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland 1557-1775 (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1977); D. F. McKenzie, Stationer's Company Apprentices 1701 to 1800 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1978); and Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades: A Preliminary Checklist of Members (Kent, UK: William Dawson, 1977).

Anne Dodd, Jr. (fl. 1739-58), the daughter of the famous “Mercury Woman” Anne Dodd (c. 1685-1739), may have been related in some manner to Elizabeth and J. Dodd, but if so, no definitive connection has been established. Mary Lewis, however, sold titles with both Anne and Elizabeth Dodd: Alexander Cruden’s The Corrector's Earnest Address to the Inhabitants of Great-Britain in 1756, and Charles Chandler’s An Invitation to Sinners to come to Jesus, that they may find Rest unto their Souls in 1773, in each instance the title pages bearing only the names of the two women sellers. These connections with Mary Lewis suggest some links between the two Dodds, but that cannot be known with certainty. Further connections with Anne Dodd and religious dissent are worth noting, however. Among her numerous imprints between 1739 and 1756 are more than twenty directly relating to dissenting writers and sold in conjunction with some of London’s leading dissenting printers and booksellers at that time. Besides the titles she shared with Mary Lewis and Elizabeth Dodd, Anne Dodd, Jr., sold in 1740 A Collection of Papers lately printed in the Daily Advertiser and William Seward’s Journal of a voyage from Savannah to Philadelphia, and from Philadelphia to England, both works relating to the evangelical evangelist George Whitefield’s revivalist activities in America, including his work with the orphanage in Savannah, Georgia. These titles were sold by Dodd along with John Oswald and James Buckland, two of London’s leading dissenting booksellers at that time, as well as Thomas Gardner, the early associate of John and Mary Lewis in Bartholomew Close who in 1740 had moved his establishment to Temple-Bar, apparently close enough to Dodd’s Peacock to have her and Gardner listed together on these two title pages as “T. Gardner and A. Dodd, without Temple-Bar,” suggesting they may have been working together at that time.  The two reunited near the end of Dodd’s career, appearing together in 1756 Eliza Haywood’s The Young Lady and Gardner’s The Universal Visitor, and Monthly Memorialist, with Gardner now working from the location for which he is best known, at Cowley's-Head, facing St. Clement's Church, in the Strand, not far from the Dodd at the Peacock. [Dodd also sold newspapers and other works printed for John Purser, another printer working in Bartholomew Close at the same time as the Lewises and the Gardners.] Dodd's more prominent connection with religious dissent, however, is her appearance on six editions of two sermons by the popular Particular Baptist minister in London at Little Wild Street, Joseph Stennett (1692-1758), works she sold in conjunction with the leading Baptist printer and bookseller in the first half of the eighteenth century, Aaron Ward at the King’s Arms, Little Britain. She also sold pamphlets with Jacob Robinson of Ludgate Street, who had significant publishing connections with Whitefield and John Wesley throughout the 1740s and ’50s. For the reference to Purser, see Plomer, Dictionaries, 75.

James Wakelin (fl. 1760-90), was not a preacher or minister. He was a former actor at the Haymarket Theatre, who opened a bookshop in Shoe Lane, publishing mostly short moral and religious works from an evangelical perspective, first from No. 8, Stationers’ Alley, Ludgate Street, 1773-76, and then from No. 3, King’s Head Court, Shoe Lane, c. 1776-90.  He may have been a Methodist, for he clearly has an evangelical emphasis and his initial publication in 1760 was a work by Wesley. Several subsequent publications of works by evangelical Anglican divines reinforce that assumption, as well as his late association with Thomas Scollick of City Road, Moorfields, most likely a Methodist bookseller whose business was close to Wesley’s City Road chapel. If he was an Arminian Wesleyan, Wakelin was nevertheless not averse to having close associations with moderate Calvinists like Mary Lewis and Henry Trapp, and possibly J. Dodd, whose religious persuasion is not known for certain. Of Wakelin’s 14 imprints between 1760 and the late 1780s (only four were not his own compositions), J. Dodd and Henry Trapp appeared with Wakelin on six of those imprints and Mary Lewis on two. For more on Wakelin, see Jonathan Barry, Owen Davies, and Cornelie Usborne, eds., Cultures of Witchcraft in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 199-200.