Granger

Granger, JAMES, born about 1723, was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and died vicar of Shiplake, in Oxfordshire, in 1776. He published a long popular Biographical History of England (1769; 5th ed. 6 vols. 1824), which was 'adapted to a catalogue of engraved British heads,' and insisted much 'on the utility of a collection of engraved portraits.' His advice led to extraordinary zeal in collecting portraits, and 'grangerised copies' became the name for works embellished with engravings gathered from all quarters—frequently secured by the unconscionable mutilation of valuable books of all kinds. A grangerised Bible, in 45 vols. folio, contained 6000 prints, and was valued at 3000 guineas. An edition of Lefevre's Voltaire in 90 vols. contained 12,000 engravings (mostly portraits), and cost the labour of twenty years; it sold in 1856 for £800. A grangerised Clarendon's Rebellion was illustrated by Mr Sutherland at a cost of £10,000. In 1888 a London bookseller had on sale, for £1500, a copy of Boydell's Shakespeare, extended by the insertion of thousands of plates to 36 volumes; the sale price probably did not represent the cost of the grangerising.