Susannah Dobson

Susannah Dobson née Dawson (c. 1742 – 29 September 1795) was a translator from the south of England, the daughter of John Dawson of "the parish of St Dunstan, London". She was notably concerned with the 14th-century Italian humanist Petrarch.

Life Susannah Dawson married in 1759 a physician and medical writer, Dr Matthew Dobson of Liverpool, where she wrote her Life of Petrarch. He died in Bath, Somerset in 1784. Their three children were Susannah (born 1764), Dawson (born 1766), and Elisa (1760/1761–1778). It has also been suggested that Susannah Dawson was born in Toxteth, near Liverpool, in 1742. One modern view of what Thrale wrote is that it implied Dobson was a lesbian. Burney wrote of her, "Though coarse, low-bred, forward, self-sufficient, and flaunting, she seems to have a strong masculine understanding." Her husband, Dr Dobson, had become Mrs Thrale's physician.

Susannah Dobson died 30 September 1795, and was buried at St Paul's, Covent Garden. According to a modern account, in "rendering down the Abbé de Sade's massive French original, she probes the actions and feelings of another age." Among her contemporaries who praised it were the novelists Clara Reeve and Elizabeth Benger.

Also ascribed to Susannah Dobson are the anonymous didactic Dialogue on Friendship and Society (1777) and Historical Anecdotes of Heraldry and Chivalry, an original scholarly work published in Worcester (1795).