Early literary efforts continued: The Boeotian

In 1824, Ainsworth ventured to publish a weekly magazine of his own, printed by Thomas Sowler , who was at that time a bookseller in St. Ann’s Square, Manchester, a year before he founded the Manchester Courier. This modest journal was called The Bœotian (Bœotia was a district of central Greece with Thebes as its capital, whose inhabitants were thought of as unsophisticated, even stupid). The journal’s motto was the subject of discussion in the Manchester Review in 1945, when the following explanation was offered: ‘The motto chosen - Boeotum crasso jurares aёre natum, which may be freely translated: “You would swear that he had been born in the gross air of the Boeotians” – may be taken as a playful allusion to the atmosphere of the editor’s home town.’ The suggestion implicit in the title seems to be a devotion to plain speaking, and the magazine featured articles and poems from Ainsworth’s own pen, and those of his friends James Crossley and John P. Aston. Some of these were reprinted from other sources, such as Crossley’s piece On Chetham's Library, which had originally appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine three years earlier, in 1821. Only six issues were published, (March 20-April 2), and copies are now extremely rare.