Eldest son of the Baptist minister Henry Dowling (1780-1869), Dowling emigrated to Tasmania in 1830, where he found work at the office of the Hobart Town Courier under James Ross. He soon moved to Launceston, where he worked on J. P. Fawkner's Launceston Advertiser, becoming its 'editor and publisher' in 1831. In 1834, Dowling opened a stationery shop in Brisbane Street, Launceston, where he also started a Savings Bank and printed and published books and newspapers on the premises. In 1837, he attempted to set up a circulating library, after which he became embroiled in a legal dispute with S. A. Tegg over the supply of books from Tegg's London connections. As Isabella J. Mead writes in her biography of Dowling, he published 'a pirated edition of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, in twenty-five parts from August to December 1838; they were followed by lithographed illustrations and in July 1839 by a bound volume, claimed to be "the largest publication which has issued from either the New South Wales or Tasmanian Press".'
Dowling continued his involvement with newspapers in the 1840s including the Launceston Courier, the Teetotal Advocate and the Van Diemen's Land Temperance Herald. He also published John West's The History of Tasmania in two volumes in 1852. Isabella J. Mead notes that in 1853 'he disposed of his printery and in 1854 his Brisbane Street warehouse became a drapery business conducted by Dowling, Swain & Co. The business was sold in 1862.
Source: Isabella J. Mead, 'Dowling, Henry (1810–1885)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dowling-henry-2237/text2419, published in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 4 November 2014.
