James Crossley (author)

James Crossley FSA (1800 – 1883) was an English author, bibliophile and literary scholar. By profession he was a lawyer.

James Crossley

FSA
Born1800 (1800)
Halifax, Yorkshire
Died1883 (1884)
Manchester, Lancashire, England
Occupation

Life

He was born in Halifax, and moved to Manchester in 1816.[1] Some of his early essays were published in the Retrospective Review.[2]

He perpetrated a literary fraud, the forging of Fragment on Mummies, supposedly by Sir Thomas Browne, that was a highly successful hoax.[3] The bogus nature of the Fragment, given by Crossley to Simon Wilkin to publish, is now regarded as highly probable, but Crossley never precisely confessed to it.[4]

He set up the Chetham Society in 1843, with Thomas Corser, Francis Robert Raines and others: it was named after Humphrey Chetham and its purpose was to edit and publish historical works relating to Lancashire and Cheshire. In the following years he personally edited many of its publications:[5][6][7] including the Autobiographical tracts of John Dee (1851),[8] and the Diary of John Worthington. He served as President from 1847 until 1883.[9]

He is said to have collected 100,000 books at his residence in Chorlton on Medlock and later Stocks House, Cheetham, Manchester.[10][11] He supplied the novelist William Ainsworth with historical material and ideas; he was in business with Ainsworth's father Thomas, and their friendship was lifelong.[12][13]

References
  1. "The city and parish of Manchester : Introduction". British-history.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  2. Campbell, Jane (1972) The Retrospective Review 1820-1828 and the Revival of 17th Century Poetry; p. 14.
  3. Kane, Robert J. (1933) James Crossley, Sir Thomas Browne, and the Fragment on Mummies, in: "The Review of English Studies", Vol. 9, No. 35 (July 1933), pp. 266-274.
  4. Schwyzer, Philip (2007) Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature; p. 152.
  5. Concise Dictionary of National Biography
  6. Archived 20 August 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  7. Levine, P. J. A. (2003) The Amateur and the Professional: Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England 1838-1886; p. 42.
  8. "Appendix II". Johndee.org. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  9. "Chetham Society: Officers and Council" (PDF). Chetham Society. 4 November 2015. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  10. Archived 12 February 2005 at the Wayback Machine
  11. Swindells, Thomas (August 2008). Manchester Streets and Manchester Men (extract). ISBN 9780554723730. Retrieved 13 June 2009.
  12. Mitchell, Rosemary (2000) Picturing the Past: English History in Text and Image, 1830-1870; p. 104.
  13. "William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) — King of the Historical Potboiler: A Brief Biography". Victoriaweb.org. Retrieved 29 October 2014.
  • Dictionary of National Biography (ed. L. Stephen); Crossley, James

Further reading
  • Crossley, James (1821) Article on the Cheetham Library [sic], Blackwood's Magazine, June, 1821 (reprinted in Ireland, Alexander (1883) The Book-Lover's Enchiridion; 3rd ed. London: Simpkin Marshall; pp. 278–84)
  • Aston, J. P. (1823) "The theatre", in Ainsworth, W. H. December Tales; pp. 165–79
  • Ellis, S. M., A Great Bibliophile: James Crossley in: Wilkie Collins, Le Fanu and others. London: Constable & Co., 1931 (reissued in 1951 by Constable).
  • Collins, Steve, An Eminent Bibliophile and Man of Letters: James Crossley of Manchester, in: "Lancashire & Cheshire Antiquarian Society Transactions"; vol. 97, 2001, pp. 137–152.
  • Collins, Stephen, James Crossley: A Manchester Man of Letters, Manchester: Chetham Society, 2012.
Professional and academic associations
Preceded by
Edward Holme		 President of the Chetham Society
1847–83		 Succeeded by
Richard Copley Christie
Preceded by
Creation		 President of the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire
1878–83		 Succeeded by
Richard Copley Christie
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