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Joseph
Priestley (1733-1804) was a major figure in the intellectual, religious
and political life of the eighteenth century. He was a chemist and physicist,
a philosopher, theologian and educationalist and a campaigner for political
liberty, religious toleration and anti-slavery. His time in Birmingham
between 1780 and 1791 was one of the most active periods of his life when
he was a member of the Lunar Society and an associate of other influential
men in the West Midlands, such as Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, James
Watt and Josiah Wedgwood. In 1791 he was forced to leave Birmingham as
a result of the infamous Priestley Riots. A few years later, in 1794,
he left England for the United States where he spent the rest of his life.
Joseph Priestley and Birmingham contains a collection of articles by historians
that focus mainly, but not exclusively, on Priestley’s time in Birmingham.
It provides a record of an individual whose ideas and activities had a
major influence, not only on Birmingham and the West Midlands, but the
wider world as well.
The publication is a result of work carried out by the “Joseph Priestley
and Birmingham Project”, which was established by Birmingham &
District Local History Association to commemorate Priestley’s life
and achievements, two-hundred years after he died in 1804. The publication
is a special edition of the Association’s renowned local history
journal, the Birmingham Historian. The Heritage Lottery Fund has generously
supported the activities of the “Joseph Priestley and Birmingham
Project”, which will also include an exhibition, a town trail, a
DVD of Priestley’s experiments and the provision of resource material
on www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk in 2005. |
