It's Dr Johnson's birthday today. Although not born in Birmingham, he made a contribution to its history through writing. This is extracted from the Revolutionary Players site :
Johnson made his first steps in his literary career in the town during the early 1730s. James Boswell tells us that Thomas Warren, the first Birmingham bookseller, obtained “the assistance of his [Johnson’s] pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical essay” for his paper, The Birmingham Journal, the first Birmingham newspaper (Life, i: 85). Little is known of its contents today, but there remains one single issue (No 28, May 21 1733), preserved in Local Studies at Birmingham Central Library.
While lodging with Hector at Warren’s house “over the Swan Tavern in High Street”, and then at the house of a person named Jervis not far from the Castle Inn, where he might have met his future wife Elizabeth Porter, Johnson worked for Warren on the translation of Fr. Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia published in 1735. Poorly printed on bad quality paper, it was Birmingham’s first published book, though it did not have Birmingham on its title page. Instead the names of Bettesworth and Heath were inserted, well known London publishers, a “device” says Boswell, “only too common with provincial publishers” .
https://web.archive.org/web/2007032...&text=&resource=4215&exhibition=1310&offset=8
Viv.
Johnson made his first steps in his literary career in the town during the early 1730s. James Boswell tells us that Thomas Warren, the first Birmingham bookseller, obtained “the assistance of his [Johnson’s] pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical essay” for his paper, The Birmingham Journal, the first Birmingham newspaper (Life, i: 85). Little is known of its contents today, but there remains one single issue (No 28, May 21 1733), preserved in Local Studies at Birmingham Central Library.
While lodging with Hector at Warren’s house “over the Swan Tavern in High Street”, and then at the house of a person named Jervis not far from the Castle Inn, where he might have met his future wife Elizabeth Porter, Johnson worked for Warren on the translation of Fr. Lobo’s Voyage to Abyssinia published in 1735. Poorly printed on bad quality paper, it was Birmingham’s first published book, though it did not have Birmingham on its title page. Instead the names of Bettesworth and Heath were inserted, well known London publishers, a “device” says Boswell, “only too common with provincial publishers” .
https://web.archive.org/web/2007032...&text=&resource=4215&exhibition=1310&offset=8
Viv.
