Description

Reverend John Richard Green (1837-1883) was an English historian. Born the son of a tradesman in Oxford, where he was educated, first at Magdalen College School, and then at Jesus College, he entered the church. In 1869 he finally gave up his work as a clergyman, and was appointed librarian at Lambeth. He had been laying plans for various historical works, including a History of the English Church as exhibited in a series of Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, and, what he proposed as his magnum opus, a history of England under the Angevin kings. The discovery, however, that his lungs were affected, necessitated the abandonment of these projects, and he concentrated his energies on the preparation of his Short History of the English People, which appeared in 1874, and at once gave him an assured place in the first rank of historical writers. He later confined himself to expanding his Short History into History of the English People in 4 volumes (1878-80), and writing The Making of England (1881), of which one volume only had appeared when he died. After his death appeared The Conquest of England (1883).