Literary history of Birmingham

Literary Quotes

I think they well illustrate the transition from a market town to an industrial metropolis. I would dearly love to put in some of Dr Johnson's observations which he wrote for the Birmingham Journal in 1734 while staying at Old Square, but unfortunately none have survived.

"Richard holds of William (Fitz Ansculf) 4 hides in Bermingeham. The arable employs 6 ploughs, 1 is in the demense. There are 5 villeins and 4 bordars, with two ploughs. Wood half a mile and 2 furlongs broad. Bermingeham was and is worth 20/–." Domesday Book, 1086

"The beauty of Bremicham, a good market town in the extreme parts that way of Warwickshire, is in one street going up alonge almost from the left ripe of the brook up a meane hill by the length of a quarter of a mile. I saw but one parish-church in the town. There be many smithes in the town that use to make knives and all manner of cutting tools, and many lorimers that make bittes, and a great many naylers. So that a great part of the town is maintained by smithes. The smithes there have iron out of Staffordshire and Warwickshire and sea-cole out of Staffordshire." John Leland, 1540 (Itinerary of Britain)

"I saw Solyhill, in which was nothing worth seeing beside the Church. Next, Bremicham, swarming with inhabitants, and echoing with the noise of Anvils, for here are great numbers of Smiths. The lower part is very watery. The upper rises with abundance of handsome buildings: and 'tis none of the least honours of the place, that hence the noble and warlike family of the Bremichams in Ireland had their original and name. From thence in the extreme point of this County northward, lies Sutton Colefield, in a foresty, unkind, and barren soil; boasting of its native John Voisy, Bishop of Exeter, who in the reign of Henry 8 raised up this little town, then ruinous and decayed, and adorned it with fair buildings, great priveleges and a Grammar-school." William Camden, 1586 (Britannia)

"June the 12th. Passed Lord Aylsford's, upon rising a hill to a gothic farm house of his, the country around is very fine, beautifully rich and wooded. Cross an extensive and poor common, and come into a sandy tract which holds almost to Birmingham; lets from 15 s. to 25 s. an acre. Got into that region of Vulcans by six o'clock, and immediately sent a card to Mr. Samuel Garbet, who has been so kind, on the publication of my Six Months Tour, to invite me there, promising to give me ample intelligence concerning the manufactures; but unfortunately he was not in town. I was, however, informed that the trade of the place in general never was brisker than at present; that in every branch, except nails, they had more orders than could be executed. I was here in 1768, eight years ago, and found that since that time the town much increased in size. June the 13th leave it. Passed Mr. Bolton's great works, and come to West Bromwich, but the road for 5 or 6 miles is one continued village of nailers, who complained to me that their trade was failing, owing to the disputes with America; but their hands when idle took to other branches, all the youngsters going to Birmingham. These nailers earn from 7 s. to 10 s. a week, according to their quickness." Arthur Young, 1776 (Travel notes)

"The town itself is because of its hilly nature unattractive, the smoke of many factories and workshops gives it a dismal, dirty appearance. Everywhere one hears hammering and pounding … It is doubtful if there is a village in cultivated Europe, perhaps not a single home even, in which there cannot be found some product of the industry of this town, whether it be a button, a nail or a pencil." Johanna Schopenhauer, 1803 [Trans. Andrew Spencer] (Erinnerungen von einer Reise in den Jahren 1803, 1804 und 1805)

"Probably in no other age or country was there ever such an astonishing display of human ingenuity as may be found in Birmingham." Robert Southey, 1807

"They came from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr Weston. One has no great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound." Jane Austen, 1815 (Emma)

"Birmingham is both one of the handsomest and ugliest towns in England. It has a population of 120,000, of whom probably two-thirds are factory workers ... Straight after my first breakfast I visited the factory of our local consul Mr Thomasson—the second largest, since the greatest of them all, where 1000 workers are employed every day and where an 80 horse-power steam engine produces innumerable objects from livery buttons to pins, has been closed to prying eyes since the visit of the Austrian Prince, whose entourage is said to have gleaned several important secrets. I remained there with great interest for several hours, despite the revolting, filthy, stinking holes which served as shops—and even made a button myself." Hermann Prince von Pückler-Muskau, 1825 [Trans. Andrew Spencer] (Reisebriefe aus England und Irland)

"It is an immense workshop, a huge forge, a vast shop. One only sees busy people and faces brown with smoke. One hears nothing but the sound of hammers and the whistle of steam escaping from boilers. One might be down a mine in the New World. Everything is black, dirty and obscure, although every instant it is winning silver and gold." Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835 (Journey to England)

"It was quite dark when Mr Pickwick roused himself sufficiently to look out of the window. The straggling cottages by the road-side, the dingy hue of every object visible, the murky atmosphere, the paths of cinders and brick-dust, the deep-red glow of furnace fires in the distance, the volumes of dense smoke issuing heavily forth from high toppling chimneys, blackening and obscuring everything around; the glare of distant lights, the ponderous waggons which toiled along the road, laden with clashing rods of iron, or piled with heavy goods—all betokened their rapid approach to the great working town of Birmingham. As they rattled through the narrow thoroughfares leading to the heart of the turmoil, the sights and sounds of earnest occupation struck more forcibly on the senses. The hum of labour resounded from every house, lights gleamed from the long casement windows in the attic storeys, and the whirl of wheels and noise of machinery shook the trembling walls. The fires whose lurid sullen light had been visible for miles, blazed fiercely up, in the great works and factories of the town. The din of hammers, the rushing of steam, and the dead heavy clanking of engines, was the harsh music which arose from every quarter." Charles Dickens, 1837 (Pickwick Papers)

"This statue [of Nelson], small as it is, is the only one, literally the only statue that Birmingham can boast of! A city of 200,000 living specimens of humanity, and only one marble man among them! ... Birmingham and Leeds appear to me, among all the large towns of England, to be the two most destitute of taste, ornament, and enjoyment." JG Kohl, 1842 (From: Dent RK, Old and New Birmingham)

"Tottering chimneys, tumble-down and often disused shopping, heaps of bricks … coarse, rough pavements … Dirt, damp, delapidation." William White, 1875 (Council meeting minutes. From: J Mckenna, Birmingham Street Names)

"I'm here in this immense industrial city where they make excellent knives, scissors, springs, files and goodness knows what else, and, besides these, music too. And how well! It's terrifying how much the people here manage to achieve." Antonin Dvorak, 1891 (From a letter)

"The air is heavy with a sooty smoke and with acid vapours, and here it is that the poor live – and wither away and die. How do they live? Look at the houses, the alleys, the courts, the ill-lit, ill-paved, walled-in squares, with last night's rain still trickling down from the roofs and making pools in the ill-sluiced yards. Look at the begrimed windows, the broken glass, the apertures stopped with yellow paper or filthy rags; glance in at the rooms where large families eat and sleep every day and every night, amid rags and vermin, within dank and mildewed walls from which the blistered paper is drooping, or the bit of discoloration called 'paint' is peeling away. Here you can veritably taste the pestilential air, stagnant and mephitic, which finds no outlet in the prison-like houses of the courts; and yet here, where there is breathing space for so few, the many are herded together, and overcrowding is the rule, not the exception. The poor have nowhere else to go." J. Cuming Walters, 1901 (Scenes in Slumland series, Birmingham Daily Gazette)

"During the half hour or so I sat staring through the top windows of that tram, I saw nothing, not one single tiny thing, that could possibly raise a man's spirits. Possibly what I was seeing was not Birmingham but our urban and industrial civilisation. The fact remains that it was beastly. It was so many miles of ugliness, squalor, and the wrong kind of vulgarity, the decayed anaemic kind … I loathed the whole long array of shops, with their nasty bits of meat, their cough mixtures, their Racing Specials, their sticky cheap furniture, their shoddy clothes, their fly-blown pastry, their coupons and sales and lies and dreariness and ugliness. I asked myself if this really represented the level reached by all those people down there on the pavements. I am too near them myself, not being one of the sensitive plants of contemporary authorship, to believe that it does represent their level. They have passed it. They have gone on and it is not catching up. Why were the newest and largest buildings all along this route either picture theatres or pubs? Because both of them offer an escape: they are bolt-holes and safety-valves. Probably not one person out of a thousand along that road would roundly declare, 'All this is a nasty mess, and I'm sick of it.' But it is my belief that at least six hundred of them out of that thousand entertain an unspoken conviction that is constantly troubling them inside and that calls for either the confectionary drama of the films or for a few quick drinks. I think I caught a glimpse then of what may seem to future historians one of the dreadful ironies of this time of ours: when there never were more men doing nothing and there never was before so much to be done." J.B. Priestley, 1934 (English Journey)

This is how Arthur Mee describes the history, literature, art and architecture of Birmingham in his 1936 volume on the county of Warwickshire.

Literary Highlights

Curiously, though the county of Warwick can in some ways be considered the home of English literature (Shakespeare [Stratford], George Eliot [Nuneaton]), Birmingham itself seems to have been too embroiled in its industry to concern itself with the trivialities of literature. Apart from Doc Johnson (see above) one or two famous writers have, however, been inspired by Brum to write great works.

Washington Irving (1783–1859) wrote his original Sketch-Book including Rip van Winkle there on a visit in 1818. John Henry Shorthouse (1834–1903) was born in Birmingham and wrote his John Inglesant there in 1880, a forerunner of the pre-raphaelite movement. And the unitarian Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) from Norwich lies buried in Key Hill Cemetery having died in Birmingham.

John Drinkwater (1882–1937) formed his Pigrim Players in Birmingham in 1907, their base soon to become today's Repertory Theatre. This was the venue of the original production of his play Abraham Lincoln (1918).

The Belfast poet Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) was a lecturer of Classics in Birmingham from 1930–35 and wrote a collection of poems in his final year. His academic place has of course been taken by the satirical novelist John Lodge (1935– )—Changing Places (1975), Small World (1984)—another lecturer at the university from 1960–87.

The science fiction writer John Wyndham (1903–1969) was born in Knowle, which is as near as damn it Birmingham. And (W)ystan (H)ugh Auden (1907–1973) grew up there after his parents moved to Solihull when he was a baby.

But perhaps the name that springs to most people's minds will be J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973). He was born in Bloemfontein in South Africa before his mother moved to South Birmingham when his father died in 1895. He spent his childhood in Moseley before writing classic novels like The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954/5).