The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Grosart, Alexander Balloch

GROSART, Alexander Balloch, Scottish editor: b. Stirling, Scotland, 18 June 1827; d. 1899. He studied at Edinburgh University and received ordination in the Presbyterian Church. In 1856 he was minister at Kinross, and after several years at Liverpool (1865-69) was called to the pastorate at Blackburn, Lancashire, where he remained until his resignation in 1892. His principal achievement was the editing and reprinting of many old Elizabethan and post-Elizabethan authors. These include a series of Puritan writers such as Richard Sibbes, Thomas Brooks, Herbert Palmer and Richard Gilpin. From 1868 to 1876 he published the ‘Fuller Worthies' Library,’ then began the ‘Chertsey Worthies' Library,’ which he completed in 1881. ‘The Huth Library’ followed. Among the authors whom he presented to his subscribers were Thomas Fuller, Sir John Davies, Fulke Greville, Henry Vaugnan, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Donne, Sir Philip Sidney, Cowley, Henry More, John Davies, Dr. J. Beaumont, Robert Greene, Thomas Nash, Gabriel Harvey, the prose extracts of Thomas Dekker and Edmund Spenser. English literature owes him a great debt for having unearthed and preserved for study much valuable literary material.