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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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GRANVILLE SHARP (1735 - 1813) Sharp was the ninth son of Thomas Sharp, the rector of Rothbury and Archdeacon of Northumberland. Born in Durham and educated at the Grammar School there, he acquired scholarly tastes and taught himself Greek and Hebrew. By 1770, he had published a number of works of biblical criticism. Sharp eventually became active in the anti-slavery movement, and defended a black immigrant, James Somerset. It was entirely due to Sharp's efforts that the famous legal decision of 1772 was obtained - that as soon as any slave set foot in England, they became free. Sharp joined the crusade against the press-gangs as well as working with Thomas Clarkson for the abolition of slavery: his suggestion for a home for freed slaves in Sierra Leone was adopted. He was a founder of the British and Foreign Bible Society and also wrote many legal, political and theological pamphlets, as well as historical treatises. He was active in the study of language too, and one of his tracts Remarks on the Use of the Definitive article in the Greek text of the New Testament published in 1798, proposed the rule known as 'Granville Sharp's canon'. Because of its important bearing on Unitarian doctrine, this gave rise to a celebrated controversy in which many leading churchmen took part, including Christopher Wordsworth. Sharp became the father-figure of the famous Clapham sect of philanthropists and evangelicals, which included William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton and Zachary Macaulay, the father of Lord Macaulay. The Clapham sect may be regarded as the ancestors of the 20th century Bloomsbury Group, including as it did the great grandparents of E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Granville Sharpe is commemorated in Westminster Abbey.
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