Alexander Balloch Grosart, the son of a builder and contractor in Stirling, was a Presbyterian minister, literary editor, publisher, and author. At one time he was best remembered for his reprints of Elizabethan and Jacobean authors. His particular interest was puritan theology. Between 1868 and 1876 he brought out thirty-nine volumes, for sale by subscription only, of a series which he called the Fuller Worthies Library; his poets included Henry Vaughan, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, John Donne, and Andrew Marvell. Grosart died in Dublin in 1899, having retired from his ministry seven years earlier. "All his literary work was marred by egotism, a want of taste, diffuseness, and clumsy arrangement of his material," said Thomas Boston Johnstone, author of his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography .He is also described as quaint, archaic, dogmatic, and bad-tempered.
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References
Grosart, Dr Alexander Balloch. Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Oxford, 1975.
Traherne, Thomas, Selected Writings, ed. by Dick Davis. Carcenet Press Ltd. Mancheter, 1988.
Last modified 26 January 2008