Educated in Strasbourg, France, Dobson became in 1856 a civil servant at the British Board of Trade, where he remained until his retirement in 1901. He began to publish poetry in magazines in 1864, and in the 1870s he played an important part in the revival of intricate medieval French verse forms (the triolet, the rondeau, the ballade, and the villanelle) that became known as the English Parnassian movement. Married in 1868, he lived in the London suburb of Ealing until his death at the age of 81.

His first collection of poems, Vignettes in Rhyme (1873), was followed by Proverbs in Porcelain (1877). In these and in At the Sign of the Lyre (1885), Dobson showed the polish, wit, and restrained pathos that made his verses popular. After 1885 Dobson was chiefly occupied with biographical and critical works: books on Henry Fielding, Thomas Bewick, Richard Steele, Oliver Goldsmith, Horace Walpole, William Hogarth, Samuel Richardson, and Fanny Burney revealed careful research into, and sympathy with, 18th-century life. Like his stress on highly artificial verse forms, this enthusiasm for the “artificial” culture of the pre-Romantic 18th century makes him a significant contributor to the later phase of the Aesthetic (Aestheticism) movement. The Complete Poetical Works of Austin Dobson was published in 1923.