Dennis Dobson (1919 – 1978)

Lewis Foreman Lewis Foreman (born 1941) is a musicologist and author of books, articles, programme notes and CD sleeve notes on classical music, specialising in British music. He has been particularly associated with the Dutton Epoch and Lyrita record labels ...

, Susan Foreman
''London: A Musical Gazetteer''
Yale University Press, 2005, p. 327. was a British book publisher who was the eponymous founder of a small but respected company in

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Background

Set up in 1944 and run from his house at 80 Kensington Church Street, Dobson Books is variously described as having been "diverse, original, and occasionally successful", "notable and pioneering" "left-wing" and a "very literary but somewhat idiosyncratic firm". The publishing house became renowned for its musicology list, and also published fiction (some in translation) including a strong science fiction list, as well as books imported from the United States. Among the diverse list of authors published by Dobson were

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, Avril Coleridge-Taylor,

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, Richard Wright, and others."Dennis Dobson"
at Open Library.

Personal life

In 1953 Dobson married Margaret Green (1928–2014), whose first job had been as his secretary, and they had four sons and three daughters. Dobson died in 1978 aged 59, after suffering a

brain haemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain (i.e. the parenchyma), into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stro ...

on the train returning from the

Frankfurt Book Fair The Frankfurt Book Fair (German: , FBM) is the world's largest trade fair for books, based on the number of publishing companies represented. The five-day annual event in mid-October is held at the Frankfurt Trade Fair grounds in Frankfurt am ...

. After his death the publishing company was wound down and his widow bought and restored

Brancepeth Castle Brancepeth Castle is a castle in the village of Brancepeth in County Durham, England, some 5 miles south-west of the city of Durham (). It is a Grade I listed building. History A succession of buildings has been on the site. The first was a ...

.Nicolas Barker
"Margaret Dobson: Publisher who helped set up a thriving list of music books and was chatelaine to the medieval Brancepeth Castle"
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', 15 December 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dobson, Dennis 1919 births 1978 deaths 20th-century British businesspeople British book publishing company founders