JOHN BASKERVILLE, the Birmingham printer, is usually portrayed as a unique, independent and irreverent individual who marched to his own drum. Nonetheless, this chapter claims that Baskerville is best described as one of many ‘rough diamonds’—a term I use to describe ambitious, self-educated men who settled in manufacturing towns at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The patterns that they displayed and their resistance to becoming ‘polished’ are developed in this chapter.

Birmingham's ability to produce rough diamonds and allow them to interact with artisans, poets, industrialists and savantswas crucial to its meteoric rise from a producer of small metal goods to an industrial metropolis. Baskerville must, therefore, be viewed in the context of his unchartered town, which attracted persons shaped by the school of life, instead of formal institutions. They were self-taught men of action, keen to start new careers that differed from the pathways of their village fathers.

Indeed, far from being a loner, Baskerville sat like a spider at the centre of a web-like network of self-motivated individuals, who produced, disseminated and acquired books. His position as a printer at the core of this network allowed him to produce fine volumes and to influence Birmingham's print culture. Because of his international reputation, Baskerville held a special place at the centre of the town's book trade. He had strong connections with local workers, mechanics, skilled artisans and inventors with practical skills: for example, John Handy, who cut his punches, and members of the Eaves and Ruston families of Deritend, who constructed a mill in Handsworth, before selling the property to the industrialist Matthew Boulton. Baskerville was also part of a community of printers, booksellers, stationers and paper-makers. They included: Robert Martin, first a journeyman, then a foreman with Baskerville; Thomas Warren Jr, printer, auctioneer and Baskerville's representative to Cambridge University Press; James Whatman Sr, who probably invented and supplied him with wove paper; and the bookseller, author and paper merchant William Hutton (1723–1815).

On a more sophisticated level, Baskerville had social and business ties with literary figures who exposed him to classical culture. He had a close friendship with William Shenstone, a poet and garden designer, who lived in nearby Halesowen, advised him on artistic matters and introduced him to his future mentor, the London bookseller, Robert Dodsley.