Shena Mason is a founder-member of Birmingham Heritage Forum and a local history author. After a long career associated with the Birmingham jewellery trade, she worked for Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery on the development first of the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, and then on Soho House. She has written guide-books to Soho House, Blakesley Hall and Sarehole Mill, all of which are available from the individual sites or from the shop at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. She contributed material to the website.
www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk , and a chapter on the Russell family to Joseph Priestley and Birmingham, ed. Malcolm Dick (Brewin Books, 2005, price £11.95).
Shena Mason's new book: The Hardware Man's Daughter: Matthew Boulton and his 'Dear Girl', was published by Phillimore & Co. Ltd. in November 2005.
The early Birmingham industrialist, Matthew Boulton, who lived at Soho House, had two children, Anne (1768-1829) and Matthew Robinson Boulton (1770-1842). Very little was known about Anne, but after extensive research in the Boulton papers in Birmingham City Archives, Shena Mason has pieced together her life, and looks in depth at her health, education, interests, friendships, and travels to London, Cornwall and Derbyshire. The book traces her doomed hopes of marriage to James Watt Junior (later of Aston Hall) and, towards the end of her life, the establishment and running of her own household. It is a snapshot of 18th century life, crowded with famous and less-famous characters whose experiences and opinions are related in their own words. The 288-page book is lavishly illustrated in colour and black and white. Many of the illustrations, including the portrait of Anne which appears on the front cover, have never been published before. It is available, price £25, from
Soho House Museum, bookshops or online from:
www.Phillimore.co.uk
Shena Mason's previous book, Jewellery Making in Birmingham 1750-1995, the most detailed history of the Birmingham jewellery trade to date, was published by Phillimore in 1998. It is now out of print, but a few copies are still available at
The Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, price £25, and it may be found in libraries.
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