Georgian Terraces: The Square

'The Square' was an early eighteenth-century urban development completed in about 1713. This was elite living, including fine townhouses which were bought and lived in by some of the town's wealthiest inhabitants.

Birmingham Printers: Thomas Warren, Lady Holte & Links to Samuel Johnson

Printed in Joseph Hill's Bookmakers of Old Birmingham (1907),
the original in Birmingham Archive.

Thomas Warren (1700-1767) was first noted as a 'bookseller' in 1727.* He sold a range of works, some of them known about through the shopping bills of Lady Holte, of Aston Hall, who visited frequently between 1729 and 1730. She bought two volumes of Gulliver's Travels; Hutchinson's 'On ye Passions'; spelling books, presumably for her children; 'Headley's method of Teaching'; the 'Beggars Opera', first performed in 1728; two volumes of 'Cyclopedia'; as well as many more publications. She had books bound and bought ink, and also paid for 'Reading' certain books, so presumably Warren offered a lending service. Warren also sold Holte other items, including a 'Pair of fine Pockett Globes' which he bought in from London. Books allowed the reader to explore the expanding eighteenth-century world, so the globes were an apt addition to the bookshop, and Warren sold books about globes and exploration too.**