Thomas Davies (bookseller)

He studied at the University of Edinburgh, and was for some years on the stage, but having been ridiculed by Churchill in The Rosciad, Davies gave up acting and opened a bookshop in Covent Garden.

It was here that in 1763 he introduced Boswell to Dr. Johnson, who was Davies' close friend, and to whom he dedicated his edition of the works of Massinger.

Davies apparently left the stage in 1762, when he again set up as a bookseller at 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden.

[1] Davies was a member of a booksellers' club which met at the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and then at the Grecian Coffee-house, where he used to read parts of his Life of Garrick and where Johnson's Lives of the Poets was suggested.

Encouraged by this success, he published in 1785 Dramatic Miscellanies, consisting of critical observations on several plays of Shakespeare, with a review of his principal characters and those of various eminent writers, as represented by Mr. Garrick and other celebrated comedians.