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Although it is well known that the English franking privilege was much abused during the eighteenth century, very little specific evidence has come forward to show the extent to which literary figures illegally used the free postage accorded government officers and members of Parliament. Howard Robinson has called our attention to the infringements on the privilege by both Samuel Johnson and Horace Walpole, pointing to the occasions when Johnson requested Mrs. Thrale to have her husband frank their correspondence and when Walpole franked letters for his friends George Montagu and the Rev. William Cole.[1] However, little else has reached print.
The present essay, by drawing upon the correspondence of the mid-eighteenth-century London bookseller Robert Dodsley, will add a number of otherwise law-abiding authors to the list of those who winked at the prescriptions of the franking privilege by employing franks for their private correspondence. On the broader scale, it should also become clear that the illegal employment of franks during the period had come to be accepted, actually expected, even by those to whom the privilege was specifically
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