Granville Sharp

Campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade.

No known connections with slavery.

Granville Sharp (1735–1813) was one of the first British campaigners for the abolition of the slave trade. He was the author of several anti-slavery pamphlets, including A Representation of the injustice and dangerous tendency of admitting the least claim of private property in the persons of men, in England, etc. (London, 1769), the first major anti-slavery work by a British writer, and was the first chairman of The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which was established in 1787.

Former owner: loan in 2020 of Johann Zoffany’s portrait of The Sharp Family of 1779-81: L1287.

G. M. Ditchfield, 'Sharp, Granville', in C. Matthew et al. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 1992-, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25208
Checked and found — Item on publisher's website

History of Parliament Trust (ed.), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social & Local History, London 1964-, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/
Checked and not found — Item on publisher's website

J. Turner et al. (eds), Grove Art Online, Oxford 1998-, https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/
Checked and not found — Item on publisher's website

UCL Department of History (ed.), Legacies of British Slave-ownership, London 2020, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
Checked and not found — Item on publisher's website