Grangerize

   The words grangerize (to add illustrations to a book) and grangerism (the practice of the same) are eponymous from the name of an English vicar who, in 1769, published a six-volume tome titled Biographical History of England from Egbert the Great to the Revolution, Consisting of Characters Dispersed in Different Classes, and Adapted to a Methodical Catalogue of Engraved British Heads.

   That man was James Granger (1723-1776), whose church was in Shiplake, Oxon, England. He had collected some fourteen thousand engraved portraits cut from books to serve as illustrations in his book. In addition, his book contained a number of blank pages for illustrations, prints, newspaper cuttings, or anything else he might filch later. Granger suggested in his preface that he was "showing the utility of a collection of engraved portraits." A fad called grangerizing developed to collect and paste portraits in appropriate places. This craze led to the mutilation of many books by those in search of engraved portraits. Granger, of course, was the chief mutilating culprit. But because his books sold at auctions for high prices, his success inspired others to keep culling illustrations from any source they could. Fortunately the practice has died down.

   Although Granger had a pleasant personality and was admired in his parish, Dr. Johnson disagreed with his liberal views and said of him, "The dog is a Whig. I do not much like to see a Whig in any dress, but I hate to see a Whig in a parson's gown."

   The most famous sermon that Granger delivered is said to be "Nature and Extent of Industry," later published as a book, with the wry dedication: "To the inhabitants of the parish of Shiplake who neglect the service of the church, and spend the Sabbath in the worst kind of idleness, this plain sermon, which they never heard, and will probably never read, is inscribed by their sincere well wisher and faithful minister, J. G." While delivering the sacrament one day in 1776, Granger had an apoplectic fit of such severity that he died. To grangerize in current usage is to mutilate (as in a book or periodical).