Memoirs of Granville Sharp Esq.

Self-educated in languages and the law the author Granville Sharp (17351813) was a leading anti-slavery campaigner. Though many of his associates in the abolitionist movement were dissenters or freethinkers he was an Anglican very much concerned with the fate of the church in America after the war of independence. His family consigned his archives to the painter playwright and author Prince Hoare (17551834) who published this biography in 1820. Sharp is less well remembered than other British abolitionists such as Clarkson and Wilberforce but it was his work which in 1772 brought the landmark case of James Somerset before Lord Mansfield who upheld Sharp''s legal arguments: as a result it was henceforth understood that any slave reaching the shores of England became free. Sharp''s continuing work for abolition and his many other charitable and scholarly activities are detailed in this fascinating work drawn directly from his own writings.