Volume 1. Dr J. A. Langford
Dr J. A. Langford (1823-1903): A Self-Taught Working Man and the Sale of American Degrees in Victorian Britain, 73pp., 8 photographs ISBN 13: 978-1495475122, ISBN 10: 1495475123, £5.99, paperback
This pamphlet by Stephen Roberts, Visiting Research Fellow in Victorian History at Newman University, Birmingham, is my first venture into publishing someone's work other than my own. It's a really interesting and original piece of research into an influential and important 'Birmingham man' showing how self-improvement provided an alternative to personal advancement in Victorian Britain.
In British provincial newspapers in the 1860s and 1870s brief reports began to appear informing readers that a number of writers, ministers and schoolmasters had been awarded LL.D degrees from Tusculum College in the United States. Correspondents to the newspapers began to query these degrees, claiming that they could not find Tusculum on the map. In fact Tusculum College did exist, and after the devastation of the Civil War, began to raise funds by selling degrees overseas to men deemed worthy of them. This pamphlet tells the story of this extraordinary saga.
The autodidact, poet and radical John Alfred Langford (1823-1903) was one recipient of a Tusculum LL.D. He was deeply proud of the honour, recording it on the title pages of his books and even on his census returns. This pam-phlet examines the routes taken by this remarkable working man into journal-ism, literature and radical politics, and the part he played in promoting the fa-mous Civic Gospel which transformed Birmingham into 'the best-governed city in the world'. This account draws on a recently-located cache of Langford's correspondence, and offers the first full picture of his life.
