The ''Birmingham Journal'' was the first

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, spor ...

known to have been published in

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. Little is known of it as few records remain, but a single copy survives in the

Library of Birmingham A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

: Number 28, dated Monday May 21, 1733. It is assumed from this that the first edition was probably published on 14 November 1732.

Background

The newspaper was published weekly (on Thursday) by local businessman and bookseller Thomas Warren from his house over the Swan Tavern in the

High Street High Street is a common street name for the primary business street of a city, town, or village, especially in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. It implies that it is the focal point for business, especially shopping. It is also a metonym fo ...

. p. 134 Among its contributors was

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

, whose work for the ''Journal'' while he was lodging with Warren in Birmingham in 1733 was his first original published writing.

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 ( N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer ...

wrote of this in his ''

Life of Johnson Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy tran ...

'': Publication of the ''Birmingham Journal'' is known to have ceased by 1741.

Johnson's role

There is no physical record that documents to what extent Johnson played a part in the making of the ''Journal''. It is known that Johnson was asked by Warren to work on the paper, and that Warren respected the extent of Johnson's knowledge to the point that he wanted to harness it for the ''Journal''. There was an old tradition among the Birmingham bookselling community that Johnson was an "assistant" to Warren and that Johnson wrote several of the essays that were printed in the paper. However, this cannot be verified because none of the papers printed during the months that Johnson could have worked on the ''Journal'' have survived.

References

{{Authority control Defunct newspapers published in the United Kingdom History of Birmingham, West Midlands Newspapers published in Birmingham, West Midlands Essay collections by Samuel Johnson Publications established in 1732 Publications disestablished in 1741 18th century in Birmingham, West Midlands