In 1731-32 a young man in his early 20s was looking for a position.

He wondered if there might be a post as assistant master at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School.

Such a post would carry the very satisfactory salary of £20 a year.

The headmaster of the grammar school was Paul Lowe who, a few years earlier, had overseen the erec-
tion of a new school building on the Lichfield Road.           This part of the school - an attractive example of 18th-century architecture - can still be seen.

The cost of the new school had been met by the corporation - in return for free tuition for 12 boys from
Sutton - and by Lowe himself.

The applicant, as we shall call him, seemed suited to such a position. His father Was a bookseller in Lichfield which meant that from an early age he had access to books.

He had been educated at the grammar schools in Lichfield and Stourbridge.

He was thus able to competently translate the work of the Roman poets Horace and Virgil, and had also begun to write his own poetry.

The applicant had then spent a year studying at Pembroke College, Oxford. The applicant regularly
walked the 30 miles from Lichfield to Birmingham, and it was then that he first saw Bishop Vesey's Grammar
School.

It should be stated that no correspondence from the applicant -or his friends survives in the archives
of the school, but this does not mean that the story that he or his friends enquired about a position is untrue.

He was certainly applying for posts in local grammar schools at this time, and was briefly employed at the grammar school in Market Bosworth.

Who was this man? And what did he do after he failed to secure a post at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School?

His name was Samuel Johnson. And, after these early rejections, he went to London, and obtained literarywork.

In 1755 he published his famous Dictionary of the English Language.

We will never know for sure if the headmaster and trustees of Bishop Vesey's Grammar School turned down a man who went on to become one of the great figures in English Literature - but it is a nice story to
believe!

Stephen Roberts is the author of Glimpses into Sutton's 'Past: A Warwickshire Market Town 1800-1914.

Associate Professor
Stephen Roberts