The printed word represented another expanding medium for the exchange of ideas. Georgian Birmingham was a highly literate society with at least seven booksellers by 1733, the largest in 1786 claiming a stock of 30,000 titles in several languages. These were supplemented by eight or nine commercial lending libraries established over the course of the 18th century, to the extent that it was claimed in the later part of the century that Birmingham's population of around 50,000 read 100,000 books per month. More specialist libraries included St. Philip's Parish Library established in 1733, and the Birmingham Library, established for research purposes in 1779 by a largely dissenting group of subscribers. Birmingham had been a centre for the printing and publishing of books since the 1650s but the rise of John Baskerville and the nine other printers he attracted to the town in the 1750s saw this achieve international significance. The town's first newspaper was the "Birmingham Journal" founded in 1732; it was short-lived but notable as the vehicle for the first published work of Samuel Johnson. "Aris's Birmingham Gazette", founded in 1741, became "one of the most lucrative and important provincial papers" of 18th century England, and by the 1770s circulated as far afield as Chester, Birmingham and London. The more radical "Swinney's Birmingham Chronicle", which caused controversy in 1771 by serialising Voltaire's "Thoughts on Religion", boasted in 1776 that it circulated across nine counties and was "filed by coffeehouses in practically every centre of any size from Edinburgh southwards". News from outside the town also circulated widely: Freeth's Coffeehouse in 1772 maintained an archive of all the London newspapers going back 37 years and received direct personal reports of proceedings in Parliament, while Overton's Coffeehouse in New Street in 1777 had the London papers delivered by express messenger the day after their publication, also having available all of the main country, Irish and European papers, and Parliamentary division lists.