James Granger - Works

Works

His works are:

• ‘Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution, consisting of Characters dispersed in different Classes, and adapted to a Methodical Catalogue of Engraved British Heads. Intended as an Essay towards reducing our Biography to System, and a help to the knowledge of Portraits; with a variety of Anecdotes and Memoirs of a great number of persons not to be found in any other Biographical Work. With a preface, showing the utility of a collection of Engraved Portraits to supply the defect, and answer the various purposes of Medals,’ 2 vols. Lond. 1769, and a supplement consisting of corrections and large additions, 1774; 2nd edit. 4 vols. 1775; 3rd edit. 4 vols. 1779; 4th edit. 4 vols. 1804; 5th edit., with upwards of four hundred additional lives, 6 vols. 1824. A continuation of the work from the revolution of 1688 to the end of the reign of George I appeared in 3 vols. Lond. 1806, from manuscripts left by Granger and the collections of the editor, Mark Noble.
• ‘An Apology for the Brute Creation, or Abuse of Animals censured,’ 1772. This sermon was preached in his church on 18 October 1772, and, as a postscript states, gave almost universal disgust to his parishioners, as ‘the mention of horses and dogs was censured as a prostitution of the dignity of the pulpit, and considered as a proof of the author's growing insanity.’
• ‘The Nature and Extent of Industry,’ a sermon preached before the Archbishop of Canterbury in the parish church of Shiplake on 4 July 1775. This was dedicated: ‘To the inhabitants of the parish of Shiplake who neglect the service of the church, and spend the Sabbath in the worst kind of idleness, this plain sermon, which they never heard, and probably will never read, is inscribed by their sincere well-wisher and faithful minister, J. G.’ This and the previous discourse were well received by the public.
• ‘Letters between the Rev. James Granger, M.A., and many of the most eminent Literary Men of his time: composing a copious history and illustration of the Biographical History of England. With Miscellanies and Notes of Tours in France, Holland, and Spain, by the same Gentleman,’ London, 1805, edited by James Peller Malcolm, author of ‘Londonium Redivivum.’

A portrait of him was in the possession of his brother, John Granger, who died at Basingstoke on 21 March 1810, aged 82. His collection of upwards of 14,000 engraved portraits was dispersed by Greenwood in 1778. Before the publication of the first edition of Granger's work in 1769 five shillings was considered a good price by collectors for any English portrait. After the appearance of the ‘Biographical History,’ books, ornamented with engraved portraits, rose in price to five times their original value, and few could be found unmutilated. In 1856 Joseph Lilly and Joseph Willis, booksellers, each offered for sale an illustrated copy of Granger's work. Lilly's copy, which included Noble's ‘Continuation,’ was illustrated by more than thirteen hundred portraits, bound in 27 vols., price £42. The price of Willis's copy, which contained more than three thousand portraits, bound in 19 vols., was £38 10s. It had cost the former owner nearly £200. The following collections have been published in illustration of Granger's work: (a) ‘Portraits illustrating Granger's Biographical History of England’ (known under the name of ‘Richardson's Collection’), 6 pts. Lond. 1792–1812; (b) Samuel Woodburn's ‘Gallery of Portraits … illustrative of Granger's Biographical History of England, &c.,’ Lond. 1816; (c) ‘A Collection of Portraits to illustrate Granger's Biographical History of England and Noble's continuation to Granger, forming a Supplement to Richardson's Copies of rare Granger Portraits,’ 2 vols. Lond. 1820–2.

"Grangerizing" became a term used to mean the collection of additional illustrations to be interleaved with a text, particularly a history of a town or county. An example of the practice was the Bristol antiquarian George Weare Braikenridge, who "grangerized" his own copy of the Biographical History with nearly 4,000 portraits. His main interest though was in grangerizing his copy of William Barrett's History and Antiquities of the City of Bristol.