Hutton Becomes a Bookseller

Chapter 3 depicts Birmingham’s booming print culture and maps its members, activities, and locations. Bookshops, printers, libraries, lecturers, and debating societies offered self-education to non-elites who enjoyed cultural activities. Hutton sold second-hand books and ran a circulating library. He disseminated useful knowledge for ‘the meaner sort’ and sold cheap paper to workshops. His neglected cashbook (1751–3) lists 1,038 books, stationery, and services. Charts and tables analyse the items he sold by type, subject, price, and sales. The cashbook’s references to ‘reading’ present new evidence of the role of the bookshop as an early community reading centre. Hutton’s very low prices also challenge the orthodoxy that non-elites could not afford to read. The books he sold were practical products, not the pathway to politeness that dominates eighteenth-century studies. Book bills, catalogues, and inventories of the contents of Hutton’s shop reveal the mechanics of selling and consuming books in rare detail.