GREEN, JOHN RICHARD (1837-1883), English histo rian, was born at Oxford on Dec. 12, 1837, and educated at Mag dalen college school and at Jesus college, where he obtained an open scholarship. On leaving Oxford he took orders and became the incumbent of St. Philip's, Stepney, where he was much loved by his parishioners. In 1868 he took the post of librarian at Lam beth, but his health was already breaking down and he was attacked by consumption. His Short History of the English People (18 7 4) at once attained extraordinary popularity, and was afterwards expanded in a work of four volumes (187 7-8o) . Green is pre-eminently a picturesque historian ; he had a vivid imagina tion and a keen eye for colour. His chief aim was to depict the progressive life of the English people rather than to write a political history of the English state. In accomplishing this aim he worked up the results of wide reading into a series of brilliant pictures. His later histories, The Making of England (1882) and The Conquest of England (1883), are more soberly written than his earlier books, and are valuable contributions to historical knowledge. Green died at Mentone on March 7, 1883. He was a singularly attractive man, of wide intellectual sympathies and an enthusiastic temperament. Mrs. Humphry Ward's Robert Els mere is said to be drawn from him. In 1877 Green married Miss Alice Stopford, herself a good historian. Among her important works are Town Life in the rsth Century (1894) , The Making of Ireland and its Undoing (1908), History of the Irish State to 1914 (1925), and Studies from Irish History (1926-27). Mrs. Green became a member of the Irish Senate in 1922, and died in 1929.
See the Letters of J. R. Green (19oi), edit. by Leslie Stephen.