Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/511

PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. 469 the taste for knowledge among the lower orders in the north of England. Even in Birmingham the trade of bookselling was introduced at a comparatively recent date. Dr. Johnson tells us that his father used to open a book- stall here on market days ; and Boswell adds, in a note, that there was not then a single regular book- shop in the whole town. Elsewhere he tells us that " Mr Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham, and was very attentive to Johnson, who he soon found could be of much service to him in his trade by his knowledge of literature ; and he even obtained the assistance of his pen in furnishing some numbers of a periodical essay, printed in the news- paper of which Warren was proprietor." Mr Warren, however, though Johnson's first encourager, has long since been forgotten, and Birmingham bookselling is now universally identified with the name of William Hutton ; and from his autobiography, published in 1816 perhaps the most interesting record of a self- made life that has ever been personally indited we give a short sketch of his career. William Hutton was born at Derby, in 1723. His father, a drunken wool-comber, scarcely brought home wherewithal to keep the wretched family from starva- tion, and " consultations were held (when the child was six years old) about fixing me in some employ- ment for the benefit of the family. Winding quills for the weaver was mentioned, but died away. Strip- ping tobacco for the grocer, by which I was to earn fourpence a week, was proposed, but it was at last concluded that I was too young for any employment." Next year, however, the result of the consultation was