Link: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digital/priestley.html

The Joseph Priestley Collection at Penn State University has been digitized and is now available on the website of the PSU Library. The digital collection contains several of Priestley's letters, his last will & testament, his memoirs and his library card, identifiying Priestley as president of the Birmingham Library. All these materials can now be seen read in manuscript on the PSU libary website (follow the link above).

Just to show what interesting things linguists can do with Google Maps, I have created two interactive maps relating to the eighteenth-century grammarian Joseph Priestley.

One is based on biographical information on Priestley, available through the following link Priestley biographical map.

The other shows the places where Priestley's grammars were published, available by following the link Priestley's grammars.

Enjoy!

Thomas Spence, the well-known land reformer, utopian writer, and advocate of men and women's rights, was honoured last week during the Spence Mini-Fest, organised by The Thomas Spence Trust. Here are some pictures from the unveiling of the commemoratory plaque, followed by the oration delivered by Keith Armstrong.

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Link: http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de

One of the measures of the popularity of an eighteenth-century grammar is its translation into other languages. In my research on Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) I have not come across many translations of his works on language, but just the other day I found one I haven't seen mentioned before. I happened upon the website European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO), for which I have added a link in this post, and found a German translation of Priestley's Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism (1777).

Dr. Joseph Priestley's Vorlesungen über Redekunst und Kritik was published by Schwickert in Leipzig in 1779, just two years after its original publication in England, in German blackletter typeface. It was translated by the German critic and literary historian Johann Joachim Eschenburg (1743-1820), who "is best known by his efforts to familiarize his countrymen with English literature" ('Eschenburg, Johann Joachim' Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 11th ed. vol.9).

Link: http://keithyboyarmstrong.blogspot.com/2010/05/thomas-spence-trust.html

It’s good to welcome the establishment of The Thomas Spence Trust, founded by a group of Tyneside activists intent on celebrating and promoting the life and work of that noted pioneer of people’s rights, pamphleteer and poet Thomas Spence (1750-1814), who has born on Newcastle’s Quayside in those turbulent times.

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