Letters from Michael Johnson: Bookselling in Lichfield

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Date:30th of April 1714

Description:The Sutherland Papers include a further letter from Michael Johnson sent to Reverend George Plaxton on 30th April 1714. Johnson refers to a book which he believed to be ‘the oldest latain bible’ in his possession, which he had sent to Plaxton at Trentham Hall.

Bookselling was extremely important to Lichfield during this period, and had been since the late seventeenth century. Johnson’s letters reveal that he sent books to Plaxton and the Leveson-Gower family at Trentham Hall.

Continuing with the theme of bookselling, Johnson remarks to Plaxton ‘I have nothing new that will at present divert you supposing you have had long since Dr Bentlies Answers to the free thinkers’. Johnson adds that Bentlies works were, in his opinion, ‘the best things this age has seen’.

Contextual Information From: 'Lichfield: From the Reformation to c.1800', A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14: Lichfield (1990), pp. 14-24. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42337.