Birmingham Gazette

" in 1956.

History

The "Gazette" was founded as the "Birmingham Gazette and General Correspondent" by Thomas Aris, a stationer from London who had moved to Birmingham in May 1740 and started a bookselling and printing business in the High Street. The first edition was issued on 16 November 1741, just under ten years after the town's first known newspaper, the "Birmingham Journal". [cite web|url=http://www.newsplan.co.uk/wm_newsplan/modules.php?name=history|title= Newspaper history in the West Midlands region|accessdate=2008-05-26|year=2005|work=|publisher=NEWSPLAN West Midlands] By 1743 it had absorbed its rival "Warwick and Staffordshire Gazette" - which had been founded in London in 1737 and moved to Birmingham in 1741 - and become the town's only newspaper. [cite book|last=|first=|authorlink=|coauthors=|editor=Stephens, W. B.|title=A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 7: The City of Birmingham |accessdate=2008-05-26|year=1964|publisher=University of London & History of Parliament Trust|pages=209-222|chapter=Economic and Social History: Social History before 1815|chapterurl=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22966]

Although decried by its rivals as "Mere register of sales or ... broker's guide" due its high number of advertisements, Asa Briggs described the eighteenth century "Gazette" as "one of the most lucrative and important provincial papers, ranking with the "Liverpool Mercury" and the "Edinburgh Courant".cite journal |last=Money|first=John|year=1971|month= |title=TAVERNS, COFFEE HOUSES AND CLUBS: LOCAL POLITICS AND POPULAR ARTICULACY IN THE BIRMINGHAM AREA, IN THE AGE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION|journal=The Historical Journal|volume=xiv|issue=I|pages=15-47|url=http://journals.cambridge.org/production/action/cjoGetFulltext?fulltextid=933780|accessdate= 2008-05-26]

References