Robert Goadby (b. 1721?; fl. 1740–1778)

GOADBY (ROBERT), printer, bookseller, and publisher in Bath, Wade's Passage, 1740–5; Yeovil, 1748–9; Sherborn, 1749–78. 1740–78. A well-known bookseller, and publisher in the West of England. Born in 1721, and educated at Repton School, co. Derby, to the masters of which he afterwards dedicated his translations from Cervantes. His knowledge was considerable, and he was well versed in several languages. He appears to have set upon as a bookseller, first at Bath in Wade's Passage, from which he published in 1741 two humorous novels entitled Scipio and Bergansa and Rinconete and Cortadillo, translated from the Spanish of Cervantes, which went through at least three editions. In 1745 he gave up his business in Bath,  sold his entire stock and went to the Hague. He returned to England in 1748, and once more took up the trade of a printer and bookseller, in Yeovil. There he began to issue a weekly newspaper called The Western Flying Post or Yeovil Mercury, and amongst other things he printed and sold a theological work in 1748, with the title Mercy and Truth, of which a copy is in the Bodleian Library. [See Rev. L. Southcomb's Christian's peculiar character, 1752.] In 1749 he moved his presses to Sherborne and united his paper with Bettinson's Sherborne Mercury, under the joint title of The Western Flying Post or Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury, the first number of which appeared on January 30th, 1749. He was the conductor of several miscellaneous publications, which he sold cheaply in the West of England. Robert Goadby died on August 12th, 1778, aged 57, and was buried at Oborne, a village near Sherborne. By his will he left a bequest of 40s. a year to the vicars of Sherborne for an annual sermon on May Day. [Nichols, III. 723–4.]