Jeremy Collier

Jeremy Collier (23 September 1650 – 26 April 1726) was an English theatre critic, non-juror bishop and theologian.

Life

Jeremiah (Jeremy) Collier was born in Stow cum Quy, Cambridgeshire, the son of Jeremy Collier, a schoolmaster. He was educated at Ipswich School under his father, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating BA (1673), MA (1676).

Collier was ordained deacon in 1676 and priest in 1678. He became chaplain to the Countess of Dorset, and rector of Ampton, Suffolk, from 1679 to 1685.

A supporter of James II, he refused, as a nonjuror (see Nonjuring schism) to take the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II after the Glorious Revolution. Furthering his obvious disapproval of the new monarchs, he publicly absolved two Jacobites who had conspired to assassinate the King and Queen. In 1713 he was consecrated a non-juror bishop by George Hickes and two Scottish bishops, Archibald Campbell and James Gadderar.

Aftermath

Although the theatre styles of the Restoration lasted a while even after Collier's pamphlets, a new and more restrained theatre began to develop due, in part, to Collier's critiques. Due to the strict morals of the Puritans as well as others such as Collier, neoclassical drama began to emerge even while Restoration drama was still flourishing. During Collier's time, Societies for the Reformation of Manners dedicated themselves to maintaining honour in playhouses.

Dictionary

Collier published an early encyclopedia in 1701, The Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical and Poetical Dictionary. He freely admitted that the text was based on a number of earlier historians, but especially out of the eighth edition of Louis Moréri's Grand Dictionnaire Historique. This was issued in two volumes in London from 1701 to 1705 with an appendix covering the time period from 1688 "by another hand" being issued in the latter year. A further appendix was issued in 1721 and a second edition in 1727. The work was not considered a success as Collier's additions were not of the same quality as the source text and it came out during the same period as the Lexicon Technicum.