The Birmingham Gazette, known for much of its existence as Aris's Birmingham Gazette, was a newspaper that was published and circulated in Birmingham

Birmingham

Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Founded as a weekly publication in 1741, it moved to daily production in 1862, and was absorbed by the Birmingham Post

Birmingham Post

The Birmingham Post newspaper was originally published under the name Daily Post in Birmingham, England, in 1857 by John Frederick Feeney. It was the largest selling broadsheet in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. It changed to tabloid size in 2008...

in 1956.

History

The Gazette was founded as the Birmingham Gazette and General Correspondent by Thomas Aris, a stationer from London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 who had moved to Birmingham in May 1740 and started a bookselling and printing business in the High Street. The first edition was issued on 16 November 1741, just under ten years after the town's first known newspaper, the Birmingham Journal

Birmingham Journal (eighteenth century)

The Birmingham Journal was the first newspaper known to have been published in Birmingham, England. Little is known of it as few records remain, but a single copy survives in Birmingham Central Library: Number 28, dated Monday May 21, 1733...

. By 1743 it had absorbed its rival Warwick and Staffordshire Gazette - which had been founded in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1737 and moved to Birmingham in 1741 - and become the town's only newspaper.

Although decried by its rivals as "Mere register of sales or... broker's guide" due its high number of advertisements, Asa Briggs described the eighteenth century Gazette as "one of the most lucrative and important provincial papers, ranking with the Liverpool Mercury and the Edinburgh Courant

Edinburgh Courant

The Edinburgh Courant was a broadsheet newspaper from the 18th Century. It was published out of Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland. Its first issue was dated Feb 14-19, 1705 and was sold for a penny. It was one of the country's first regional papers, second only to the Norwich Post...

".