Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Collinson, John
COLLINSON, JOHN (1757?–1793), county historian, vicar of Clanfield, Oxfordshire, was instituted to the vicarage of Long Ashton, Somerset, in 1787, and also held the perpetual curacy of Whitchurch in the same county. He died at the Hotwells, Bristol, on 27 Sept. 1793, at the age of thirty-six. He published 'The Beauties of British Antiquities, selected from the writings of Antiquaries,' 1779, 8vo, and in 1781 issued proposals for a history of the county of Somerset in one volume folio. The work was finally published in 1791, with the title 'History and Antiquities of the County of Somerset, collected from authentick Records and an actual Survey made by the late Mr. Edmund Rack,' in 3 vols. 4to (for account of Rack see Collinson, Somerset, i. 77). Collinson appears to have largely used, and indeed to have appropriated bodily from, the Palmer MSS., now in the possession of Sir Alexander Acland Hood, Dart., of St. Audries, Somerset. The 'History' was severely criticised in the ' Gentleman's Magazine.'
[Gent. Mag. 1793, lxiii. i. 148, 236, ii. 865; Collinson's Somerset, ii. 299; Hist. MSS. Comm. 6th Rep., Introd. p. xiii and 344; Athenæum, 8 Jan. 1887, p. 65.]