Hello and welcome to the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Blog!
The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum has been a cornerstone of Lichfield life since 1901 (the above picture shows it in 1900, shortly after it had been acquired by the city – if you look closely, you can see the tenants of the building in the ground floor windows!).
The house was originally built for Samuel Johnson’s parents, Sarah and Michael, in 1708 and the family ran their bookshop business on the ground floor. You can find out more by clicking the About Us tab at the top of the page.
We’ve set up this blog so that we can share some of what we get up to behind the scenes at the museum. Daily life here is very varied so we want to show you a little of what our staff and volunteers do, whether that’s considering new items for the collection, setting up exhibitions, hosting a visiting school group or carrying out preservation work.
As well as being a public museum, we’re also home to a collection of over 8,000 items relating to Samuel Johnson, his circle and eighteenth-century Lichfield. The collection includes prints and paintings, furniture, manuscripts, books and letters, so we will be showcasing some of our favourites in regular Object of the Month and Featured Object posts.
We would also like to invite contributions to the blog from researchers interested in Johnson’s life, works or wider literary fellowships, as well as genealogists and historians interested in eighteenth-century life in Lichfield and the surrounding area.
We hope you enjoy seeing behind the scenes at the Samuel Johnson Birthplace.