Descripción
Quite rare 1816 FIRST EDITION with 402 pages. Engraved portrait in the front(see pictures). Marbled boards, original leather label on spine. Some browning to pages, the front board is a bit loose and there is some pencil writing on one of the blank pages plus a tiny sticker on the front decorated pages that relates to the book. A small barely legible stamp of a previous owner on the publisher page. Otherwise, a very solid copy of this wonderful autobiography of William Hutton published in 1816 the year after his death. William Hutton (30 September 1723 1815) was a poet and the first significant historian of Birmingham, England. In 1746 he taught himself bookbinding, and three years later opened a shop in Southwell. He moved to Birmingham in 1750 and opened a small bookshop. He married Sarah Cock from Aston-on-Trent in 1755 and they had three sons and a daughter, Catherine Hutton (1756-1846), who became a writer. In 1756 he opened a paper warehouse the first in Birmingham which became profitable. He built a country house on Bennetts Hill in Washwood Heath, and bought a house in High Street. He published History of Birmingham in 1782 and was also elected as Fellow of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland (F. A. S. S.). He was elected overseer of the poor, and in 1787, to the Court of Requests, a small claims court for nineteen years, handling over 100,000 claims. Both his houses were destroyed in the Birmingham Riots in 1791 (the Priestley Riots) leading to his historical account in Narrative of the riots in this, his autobiography. He is generally held to be the first person in modern times to walk the entire length of Hadrian's Wall, producing an account of his 1801 journey in The History of the Roman Wall. Walking 600 miles from his Birmingham home, along the wall, and back home again, he wrote in the preface, "I have given a short sketch of my approach to this famous Bulwark; have described it as it appears in the present day, and stated my return. Perhaps, I am the first man that ever traveled the whole length of this Wall, and probably the last that will ever attempt it ." He completed his autobiography The life of William Hutton just before his death in 1815. He is commemorated by a blue plaque on Waterstone's bookshop on High Street, near the start of New Street, Birmingham and as a Bas relief on Derby's Exeter Bridge close to the Mill where he did his apprenticeship. His memoirs paint a brief picture of the highlights of each year of his life from 1725, where he writes that "memory now comes to the aid the pen", to 1812, when he becomes too old to continue. An example of his prodigious memory was the way he was able to recall, when he was in his eighties,at least one trivial anecdote for every day of his life from the age of 10, apart from thirteen days. This is an absorbing work which gives a first-hand account of life in the eighteenth century and the way he progressed from the being the child of an alcoholic father with nothing in the world to being a wealthy and notable businessman, author and antiquarian. N° de ref. del artículo ABE-3305179524
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