Samuel Johnson’s Birthplace was not only a family home, it was also a family business. This month’s blog post highlights items from the Museum collection which are related to the history of the Johnson’s bookselling business.
Samuel Johnson’s father was born in a thatched cottage in Cubley, Derbyshire in 1656. His parents were William and Katherine, and he was the eldest of four children: brothers Benjamin and Andrew, and sister Margaret.
Michael entered the book trade in April 1673 when he was apprenticed in London to Richard Simpson at the sign of the Harp in St Paul’s Churchyard for eight years. Bookselling became a family trade, as Benjamin joined him as an apprentice to Simpson in 1675, and youngest brother Andrew was later an apprentice to Benjamin.
Prior to moving to the Breadmarket Street house which we know today, Michael started his business in another premises on Market (then know as Sadler) Street in the 1680s. Records indicate that he was well known across the region, with customers in Alrewas, Catton and Elford, Eccleshall, Ashbourne, Uttoxeter and even Gloucester. His contacts for suppliers of hides to bind books went as far as Ireland and Scotland.
One customer, Sir William Boothby at Ashbourne Hall, repeatedly made complaints about Michael’s work: “Your books open very ill so that it is troublesome reading: pray mend this great fault.”
Being a bookseller in the early eighteenth century meant involvement in many aspects of the production of a book. As well as buying stocks of books from the sales of estates, Michael would have received printed sheets which he then bound, either in standard bindings for the shop shelves, or to order. In the 1790s Michael was also involved in the publication of some works, including John Floyer’s medical works, and religious texts.
Michael didn’t work alone. His brother Andrew assisted him before he went on to establish his own bookselling business in Birmingham (a seemingly short-lived career as Samuel Johnson later remembers his Uncle Andrew as a boxer in Smithfield) Michael also had apprentices of his own, such as Simon Martin who went on to become a bookseller in Leicester, and Ann Deakin supported the household as a servant.
Samuel’s parents Michael and Sarah married in 1706 and the bookshop that we can still visit to this day was established shortly before Samuel was born in 1709.
The family business was not as successful in the new century, and financial worries were added to by Michael’s efforts to branch out into parchment production ending in a court appearance in 1717. This was due to operating the trade of a tanner without having been apprenticed to it. The charges didn’t affect Michael’s local civic standing though, and he was elected to Junior Bailiff (equivalent to Deputy Mayor) the following year.
While the parchment case was ongoing, Michael held auctions in Worcester and the advertisement for the event shows the variety of stock that the family shop held:
Michael also attended markets, and a well-known story from Johnson is his regret in later life that he refused to attend the stall in Uttoxeter on his father’s behalf: an act of teenage rebellion for which he paid penance as an old man, standing at the site of the stall in the rain.
In 1731 Michael Johnson died and the shop was continued by Sarah Johnson, with help from family servant Catherine, or ‘Kitty’, Chambers and Johnson’s step-daughter Lucy Porter.
Samuel Johnson once said that he was “Bred a Bookseller, and I have not forgotten my trade.” Johnson’s exposure to the industry from such a young age was no doubt useful when negotiating the book trade as an author in later life, and he also knew how to bind a book. A Lichfield bookseller recalled that Johnson once visited his shop and found a book which he recollected the binding of to be the work of his own hands. Mrs Thrale wrote in a letter to Johnson in 1777: “It were better to bind books again, as you did one year in our thatched summer house.”
Although Samuel may have had amateur experience of binding, it seems that younger brother Nathaniel took a more active role in assisting Sarah with the business. A letter from 1736 addressed to ‘Sarah Johnson, Bookseller’ refers to him acting on her behalf to recoup accounts owed to Michael in Burton.
After the death of Sarah Johnson in 1759, Kitty Chambers stayed and kept the house going with help from Lucy Porter until Kitty’s death in 1767. After this, the bookshop business initially passed to William Bayley for a few years, but the house was rented to an ironmonger by 1781. Following Johnson’s death in 1784 the building once again became a bookshop, and from 1785 to 1802 was the property of bookseller Major Morgan.
When the Birthplace Museum opened to the public in 1901 the shop was used as a room for collection displays and was once again opened as a bookshop in the 1980s. Today, every purchase made or book donated helps to support the future of Johnson’s Birthplace.
