History West Midlands On Air

In this second of two podcasts on the voyage to America made in 1874 by Birmingham’s lost philosopher, Professor Ewan Fernie, Director of the ‘Everything to Everybody’ Project, and the project’s American Lead, Professor Katherine Scheil, continue their discussion with the Publisher of History West Midlands, Mike Gibbs.  In this episode,  they discuss how Dawson and Shakespeare reached the American frontier.  They bring out the wider impact of Birmingham’s nineteenth-century culture on the developing cultural identity of the United States.  They unfold a range of intimate relationships between American Shakespeareans and Dawson.  And they discuss how Dawson’s quiet right-hand man, the industrialist and bibliophile, Samuel Timmins, was also a major influence on American Shakespeareans.  Overall, this programme evokes an energetic transatlantic scholarly community reaching from Birmingham across America, an international Shakespearean fellowship who were working out a new culture for new times.  The podcast ends