George Ballard (c. 1706 – June 1755) was an English antiquary and biographer, the author of Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1752).

Title page of George Ballard's Memoirs
Title page of George Ballard's Memoirs of several ladies of Great Britain (Oxford, 1752)

Life

Ballard was born at Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. Self-educated, Ballard taught himself Anglo-Saxon while working in a habit-maker's shop, and attracted the attention of the Saxon scholar Elizabeth Elstob. Lord Chedworth and other local gentlemen provided him with an annuity of £60 a year, enabling Ballard to move to Oxford to use the Bodleian Library. Dr. Jenner appointed him a clerk of Magdalen College, Oxford, and he subsequently became a university beadle.

Ballard died young, and his only printed publication was Memoirs of several ladies of Great Britain, who have been celebrated for their writings, or skill in the learned languages, arts and sciences (Oxford: W. Jackson, 1752). This quarto volume was published by subscription, and dedicated to Sarah Talbot of Kineton, the wife of the clergyman William Talbot of Kineton who had helped him receive patronage as a young man, and Mary Delany. The first woman treated by Ballard's Memoirs is Julian of Norwich; the last is Constantia Grierson (1704/5–1732).

Ballard left a large manuscript collection, and his substantial correspondence, to the Bodleian.

Subjects of Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain

In the Memoirs, Ballard arranged his sixty-five essays chronologically. This list is alphabetical, and names have been modernized to reflect current practices.

Notes

  1. ↑ "Elizabeth Legge," Collective Biographies of Women. Accessed 24 June 2022.

References

  • Allibone, S. A. A critical dictionary of English literature. 1859-71.
  • Ballard, George. ''Memoirs of several ladies of Great Britain. Edited with an introduction by Ruth Perry. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985.
  • Chalmers, A. The general biographical dictionary. 1812-1817.
  • Vaisey, David. "Ballard, George (1705/6–1755)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/1235. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
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